Best IJN ASW assets?

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Shark7
For those losing so many ships to the E boats, I have to ask...where exactly is this happening? Shallow coastal water or deep blue water?

In my case, the great majority have been in deep blue water..., though now that I'm closing in on Japan (November 1944) I'm having to use more subs in shallow water to cut the routes from China.

[Rainer79]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Weapon counts are a distant second to sensors. If you can localize him and then fix him all you need is one Hedgehog salvo. In modern ASW, only one weapon is normally used. Yes, they home, but they're also dumped on the sub's head.

The raw ASW count is not the whole story and the IJN does get penalized.

From the manual:
"Prior to 1944, Allied crews perform ASW functions during daylight at 114% of their crew rating, and at night at 150% of their crew rating (except for British crews which get no bonus at night as they generally already have extra high night experience). Prior to 1943, Japanese crews perform their ASW functions at 67% of their crew rating, while in 1943 and thereafter they perform at 80% of their crew rating."

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Weapon counts are a distant second to sensors. If you can localize him and then fix him all you need is one Hedgehog salvo. In modern ASW, only one weapon is normally used. Yes, they home, but they're also dumped on the sub's head.

USN sonar was just better. It was built to tight QA standards, not in paper-shacks with dirt floors. It had years of R&D behind it. And by 1944 all the lessons of the Battle of the Atlantic had flowed through the training pipelines to the PTO.

Balao boats were also very much more advanced than the Salmon and P- and T-classes at the start of the war. Thicker hulls, better DC design, way better trained crews, also better sonar for evasion. Historic sinking numbers per encounter bear this out. At no time was the USN losing 2-3 boats a WEEK.

Exactly! The current system with it's weight towards number of DC's is like comparing the accuracy of a sawed off 10-guage shotgun to a scoped sniper rifle based on the size of the slug.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Rainer79

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Weapon counts are a distant second to sensors. If you can localize him and then fix him all you need is one Hedgehog salvo. In modern ASW, only one weapon is normally used. Yes, they home, but they're also dumped on the sub's head.

The raw ASW count is not the whole story and the IJN does get penalized.

From the manual:
"Prior to 1944, Allied crews perform ASW functions during daylight at 114% of their crew rating, and at night at 150% of their crew rating (except for British crews which get no bonus at night as they generally already have extra high night experience). Prior to 1943, Japanese crews perform their ASW functions at 67% of their crew rating, while in 1943 and thereafter they perform at 80% of their crew rating."

Even more head scratching over the E numbers then.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Feltan

Bullwinkle,

I will agree with you about the lower sinking levels IRL.

However, if I am not mistaken, wasn't the U.S. doing carrier raids on and near the Home Islands by late 1944? IRL, I wonder how many of these E class boats got the opportunity to even engage U.S. submarines?

I am wondering if what some of you are seeing a "what if," as in, what if these "E" ships hadn't all been sunk by U.S. aircraft this is what things might have been like.

? Just thinking outloud ?



In 1944 a fair number of boats were in and around major island ops like the Marianas, but many game players, it seems from AARs, park way ahistorically too many boats right off the HI. Right up to the end a lot of patrols were to Formosa, Indo-China, Sumatra etc. The tanker war took place from summer 1944 to early 1945. Most of these patrols were not under Allied air cover. Now, by spring of 1945, yeah, patrol reports were full of sampans and a lack of any targets, partly due to air campaign sinkings, but not in 1944.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
I entered that era coincident with a major patch (3 I think), so I never knew if it was the patch or WAD all along. Experience is nice, but some of those subs had two years of experience too, and great COs. I've never looked at the editor for E stats, but if they're really 14s, and ASW-designed DEs are 11s, that's just wrong IMO. Allied sonar, gear and especially training, was head & shoulders better than the IJN by late 1944. If a DE is an 11, no platform in the game should be a 14.

ASW “rating” is nothing more than the number of launchers. Yes, 14 is bigger than 11. But 30 AA is also bigger than 15 AA. But when the 30 is 7.7mm machine guns and the 15 is 40mm Bofors??? Same with ASW. "Rating" is a good thing to look at (within a Nationality) to see what's the better escort for a convoy. Japan 14 is better than Japan 11, and so on. But it is rather misplaced to compare Japan 14 to Allied 11.

Japanese DCs are less capable than Allied DCs – a data thing (see, e.g., DaBabes). As to hydrophones, asdic, sonar, doctrine, whatever, the effects of these things are modeled in code. Allied ASW “capability” grows significantly on a regular basis, with respect to Japan. Increased “capability” includes % chance to detect, % chance to engage, % chance to hit, and with a whopping better weapon.

14 (or even 30) pea shooters don’t cut it against 11 Browning pump 12-gagues.

And all the leader and experience stats are overlayed on top of all this.

@mike scholl 1
yes, “So you have been told …”, and I’m here to tell you the same thing again. I am like Don, I am no longer “official”, but I do get the latest source and I do know my math.

We have taken a seriously close look at this for DaBabes. We have made some tweaks, but for primarily for the sake of uniformity. The math and the nominal results work just fine, for us, and for the majority of the 200+ players that use the Babes scenarios.

[CapAndGown]

I am afraid that despite the OP's plea that this thread not be about whether ASW is modeled correctly, those are the only responses so far. So let me at least provide the answers I have seen:

The best ships are ones with Type 2 depth charges. The A/S mortar does not seem to do much of anything since the ships that carry it prefer do shoot off their DCs instead.

It would seem based on the above discussion that having multiple DC racks is better. A number of ships come with 3 racks, others with 2. These would be better since they give you more chances to hit.

High crew experience can help a lot. I think good captains can help too.

Personally, I like the Otori class TBs. Get their experience up by attacking PT boats early on, then convert them to E class. The Shimushu class E boats seem to be pretty good too since their base experience level seems to be higher. The Ch-13 class SCs will eventually get Type 2 DCs and surface radar. Not sure if they are any good because of their low speed and low experience. But at least you get a lot of them and should be able to flood the zone. In this case, I would imagine that a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" process should eventually yield a hand full of very good ships.

[Shark7]

Since modern ASW has been mentioned thought I'd give a quick synopsis on the difference between modern and WWII style ASW in case some aren't familiar with it.

World War 2 you practically have to be on top of the sub to engage it...your greatest range was going to be a mortar, hedgehog or DCT so all contacts were prosecuted within 1 nm or so of the attacking ship...or if you are lucky you have an aircraft close enough to try and attack the sub.

In a modern ASW engagement, you can have a DDG, FFG or CG that has up to 3 CZ passive sonar capability (CZ = Convergence Zone) and usually carries one or two helicoptors on board with hangar facilities to service them. The initial contact can be made up to 100 nm from the ship with passive sonar. Once you make the contact, you usually launch a helicoptor or two, a land base ASW aircraft or a stand-off rocket thrown torpedo to engage it. If you have a good lock, and it is in range, the rocket thrown torpedo is the best choice because it arrives quickly, and it can not be easily detected by a submerged sub until splashdown. Second best choice is the Helicoptor and the next best choice is the land based ASW aircraft...they can localize and attack once they have a search area. The sub isn't helpless though, they do have countermeasures (noisemakers) to try and spoof the torpedoes seeker.

Basically there is no comparison between the two. In a modern ASW combat, the 'attacking' ship may never be in harms way, its aircraft or rocket thrown torpedoes allow it to engage from beyond the sub's torpedo range.

The closest thing to WWII in the modern environment would be Cold War Era Russian or Chinese coastal patrol boats...they are basically just glorified subchasers and pretty much fight WWII style, though with better weapons (active homing torpedoes and anti-submarine rockets).

[JWE]

whoops, bad post

[Nikademus]

No Cheetos for U!

[Bullwinkle58]

Good to know more of the math, JWE. For my current game I suspected something along those lines re the ratings, so I edged the Type 2 DC down a bit on Accuracy, to an 8. I probably should have toned down the E's launcher count instead. Next time I will, and leave the DDs' Type 2s alone.

You probably would like, as much as any of us, to get into the sensor code and re-model it to make it the huge game-changer it really was and is. I know, from forums for past sub games by Sonalysts, that sonar modeling is a math Everest, and radar not much different. If ever there's a WITP2 I hope that can be funded in the design specs.

Thanks for the knowledge.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Since modern ASW has been mentioned thought I'd give a quick synopsis on the difference between modern and WWII style ASW in case some aren't familiar with it.

World War 2 you practically have to be on top of the sub to engage it...your greatest range was going to be a mortar, hedgehog or DCT so all contacts were prosecuted within 1 nm or so of the attacking ship...or if you are lucky you have an aircraft close enough to try and attack the sub.

In a modern ASW engagement, you can have a DDG, FFG or CG that has up to 3 CZ passive sonar capability (CZ = Convergence Zone) and usually carries one or two helicoptors on board with hangar facilities to service them. The initial contact can be made up to 100 nm from the ship with passive sonar. Once you make the contact, you usually launch a helicoptor or two, a land base ASW aircraft or a stand-off rocket thrown torpedo to engage it. If you have a good lock, and it is in range, the rocket thrown torpedo is the best choice because it arrives quickly, and it can not be easily detected by a submerged sub until splashdown. Second best choice is the Helicoptor and the next best choice is the land based ASW aircraft...they can localize and attack once they have a search area. The sub isn't helpless though, they do have countermeasures (noisemakers) to try and spoof the torpedoes seeker.

Basically there is no comparison between the two. In a modern ASW combat, the 'attacking' ship may never be in harms way, its aircraft or rocket thrown torpedoes allow it to engage from beyond the sub's torpedo range.

The closest thing to WWII in the modern environment would be Cold War Era Russian or Chinese coastal patrol boats...they are basically just glorified subchasers and pretty much fight WWII style, though with better weapons (active homing torpedoes and anti-submarine rockets).

Mostly true, except that ASROC's range was certainly inside a sub's engagement range. Also, CZs work in both directions. It's far more common in my experience for the skimmer to be unaware that a sub is around than the reverse. Also, a P-3 can be noticed before it drops if it flies anywhere close to one of the sub's arrays at low altitude. I've seen that too.

My only point in even bringing up modern ASW was to point out that sensors make the play, not weapon count. Often the winner only needs one wepaon (that works both ways too.) In WWII the winnner needed multiple weapons, but sensors were still the determining factor, with training probably ahead in line on weapon count as well. A DC which missed by feet was a loud noise; one a couple of feet closer was doom. Of course speeds and depths were orders of magnitude less than today, but still, a good active sonar to nail range and bearing for the drop run was crucial. On that point, acceleration was also a pretty important factor to get onto the run after the drift phase, and DEs were designed to drag race. My Dad served on several WWII-era DEs in the early 1950s as a sonarman; he's told me stories about playing with the Soviet subs of that era.

[PaxMondo]

The biggest difference to me is that most IJ players HAVE as ASW strategy.  The IJ weapons weren't much different, it's just in IRL the IJ did not use them appropriately until late war.  The allies had been on the receving end since '39 and were serious about ASW from day one of the pacific war.
 
So, yes, you won't get historical results in the game because the players are not limited to historical strategies and tactics and you thus get ahistorical outcomes.  BTW, very few games have the IJ lose 4 carriers on June 4-6th 1942 nor do many players send the Aussie/Brit reinforcement units on into Singers.  Capice? [8D]

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ASW “rating” is nothing more than the number of launchers. Yes, 14 is bigger than 11. But 30 AA is also bigger than 15 AA. But when the 30 is 7.7mm machine guns and the 15 is 40mm Bofors??? Same with ASW. "Rating" is a good thing to look at (within a Nationality) to see what's the better escort for a convoy. Japan 14 is better than Japan 11, and so on. But it is rather misplaced to compare Japan 14 to Allied 11.

Japanese DCs are less capable than Allied DCs – a data thing (see, e.g., DaBabes). As to hydrophones, asdic, sonar, doctrine, whatever, the effects of these things are modeled in code. Allied ASW “capability” grows significantly on a regular basis, with respect to Japan. Increased “capability” includes % chance to detect, % chance to engage, % chance to hit, and with a whopping better weapon.

14 (or even 30) pea shooters don’t cut it against 11 Browning pump 12-gagues.

And all the leader and experience stats are overlayed on top of all this.

Thanks. Perfectly clear to me now, although this was pretty much my understanding before. Clarification is always appreciated.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

The biggest difference to me is that most IJ players HAVE as ASW strategy.  The IJ weapons weren't much different, it's just in IRL the IJ did not use them appropriately until late war.  The allies had been on the receving end since '39 and were serious about ASW from day one of the pacific war.

So, yes, you won't get historical results in the game because the players are not limited to historical strategies and tactics and you thus get ahistorical outcomes.  BTW, very few games have the IJ lose 4 carriers on June 4-6th 1942 nor do many players send the Aussie/Brit reinforcement units on into Singers.  Capice? [8D]

Sorry, but this argument is baloney. It's not about strategy and tactics. It's per attack. In deep water. With experienced crews. There is simoly NO WAY the USN could have, would have lost 2-3 subs per week in the late war. Tactics smactics. IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse. In 1944 the USN sub force was cranking on all cylinders, the best submarine force the world has ever seen. If the IJN had put a lot of Es out there on the front line in 1944-45 they would have had a lot of sunk Es.

Game results are a factor of the code over-weighting ASW weapons count, and underweighting or not including all of the things that really matter at sea.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

My point is, using the historical reference (which is our best reference) you still need to address the events that led to it in a simulation such as AE. As has been pointed out numerous times 4-6 June 42 was pivotal. IF you beleive that (as I do), then you also have to accept that IF it does not happen, then a great number of things will not follow the historical result. If poor ASW was due to lack of training and fuel (which I agree with), and Midway events precipitated that, you then have to conjecture what would have been the outcomes. I beleive that Gary and the dev team have done just that. The allies have almost a 50% advantage in ASW based upon what is above. IMO, that is not a small difference. In fact, as was also presented above, you could make a strong case that the gap should not be so large. Electronics (sonar) in the 40's wasn't that much of a difference maker. ASW was still a "knife" fight, fought at close range. Training and the bigger boom made more difference. Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

Shouldn't really make much difference if the game's model is historically accurate. Yes, with the advantage of hindsight a player can start thinking about ASW earlier. But that shouldn't change the fact that Japan was neither a scientific or industrial power in the 1940's.

Britain and Germany excelled in pure science, Germany and the USA in Engineering, and the USA and USSR in mass production. Italy and Japan were "sucking hind teat" in all of these categories. Nor did the Axis have the kind of partnership that developed between the Western Allies..., where British could isolate pennicylin (sic) and give it to the US pharmacuticals industry to be produced by the millions of doses. Or design the "cavity magnatron" for radar, then send it to the US for GE and Westinghouse to produce by the 10's of thousands.

Japan's scientific base was limited, and she had virtually no civilian consumer economy to co-opt for war production. So while she could start thinking about ASW sooner (in the game), in the real historical sense there was not much she could do about it. Her situation was so limited that she was the only warring power to begin civilian rationing 6 months BEFORE Pearl Harbor!

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results.

Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

You've hit a key point game wise. The more detail player control or the more options there are, the greater the ability to alter the results.

[crsutton]

After about 400 turns of sub warfare vs an experience opponent, I can say that Japanese ASW has been toned down from WITP quite a bit. It is still too effective but not horrible. I have yet to face Japanese ASW in 44 and am worried about it a bit but in 43 it is bearable.

Problems are as I see it. Too much ability for non-radar equipped air to spot and attack Allied subs. The dectection should be lower in consideration of Allied air dection radar. I have only lost two subs to Japanese air but have had way too many subs sent home due to damage.

Every allied sub sighting results in an ASW attack. The reality was that many times poorly trained escorts with insufficent sonar and no radar never located the attacking sub. Sometimes I should be able to sink a ship and just move on......

Large convoys. Smart Japanese players will do the logical. Large convoys work the same way in game as they do in real life by providing fewer targets for attack and better defence.

Solutions are simple.

Place a max cap on the level that Japanese ASW assets can ever be trained. Perhaps not more that the 40 range for both aircraft and maybe 35 for ships, and institute serious penalties for large Japnanese convoys to reflect their inability to defend them-such as many more multiple attacks by radar equipped Allied subs in one turn depending on the size of the convoy.

I might ad that Allied ASW is working just fine. After a year of eating Japanese torpedoes. I am beginning to really hammer Japanese subs with perhaps 10 sunk in the first two months of 1943. Reasons are the growth of Allied ASW assets and better equipment (got my first mousetrap kill [;)]) Also, I just did not have the freedom to train up Alllied air ASW in the first year due to a shortage of searching patrols. Now that I have plenty of radar equipped aircraft and some very highly trained aircrews it is starting to pay off.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

My point is, using the historical reference (which is our best reference) you still need to address the events that led to it in a simulation such as AE. As has been pointed out numerous times 4-6 June 42 was pivotal. IF you beleive that (as I do), then you also have to accept that IF it does not happen, then a great number of things will not follow the historical result. If poor ASW was due to lack of training and fuel (which I agree with), and Midway events precipitated that, you then have to conjecture what would have been the outcomes. I beleive that Gary and the dev team have done just that. The allies have almost a 50% advantage in ASW based upon what is above. IMO, that is not a small difference. In fact, as was also presented above, you could make a strong case that the gap should not be so large. Electronics (sonar) in the 40's wasn't that much of a difference maker. ASW was still a "knife" fight, fought at close range. Training and the bigger boom made more difference. Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

My comment last night was inartful. Let me try to do better.

I agree that players can get the IJN ahistoric levels of fuel, etc. What I disagree with, or perhaps just am side-arguing, is that nothing the Japanese player can do in the game really can affect the ASW encounter at sea. Yes, they can set up ahistorical ASW hunter-killer groups and patrol in ways they couldn't/didn't do in RL. They can divert shipyard repair points to keep ASW assets at sea when the Japanese economy didn't do that in RL. Fine.

But at the point of the tactical engagement the player has no control. AE is not a tactical game. You simply put an ASW-capable asset in a 40-mile hex with an enemy submarine and stand back. EVERYTHING important to the outcome at that point is not under the player's control. Sensors, weapons effects, crew response, ASW group formation discipline, weather effects, attack interim damage, etc., etc., etc. are all abstracted in the code. And it's those variables--not fuel and shipyards--that would determine outcomes in RL. And the player, despite your earlier assertion which I was reacting to, can't control them. So, the results both I and Mike have seen, while wildly ahistorical, are also not the result of bad play. They're in the code. Enter-the-hex-and-go-get-a-beer time. They aren't because Japanese players benefit from earlier ahistorical events a la Midway. They're because the ASW ratings built into the code and OOB, as JWE expalined, are a sledge-hammer and not a scalpel. More launchers and ammo equals more hits, even if each IJN hit is less damaging than a USN hit because the Type 2 DC is less powerful. That ASW rating rules the roost. And in RL the number of launchers was not even in the top 5 variables leading to attack success or failure. But that's the way the code works. OK, fine, I get it. I accept. At least I know that the 1944-45 ASW war will resemble nothing I know from history no matter what I, as the Allied player, do, or can do. (Outside play in the editor.)

Finally, on the issue of sensors, I disagree with your assertion that they were a minor element. Yes, WWII ASW weapons made ASW a close-in fight. That does not mean that sensors were not determinative. Certainly the Battle of the Atlantic disproved that. Most of the time the first knowledge an IJN escort had that a sub was near was a merchant exploding. Sensor equals Mark I eyeball at that point. For the next few minutes, the ASW commander had a datum that a sub was somewhere inside a circle centered on the target of about 4000 yards' diameter. If it was night, he was pretty sure the sub was surfaced; in daylight he knew. After that sensors come into play. WWII ASW weapons had a PK of tens of yards. (The Hedgehog, if the sub was attacked athwartships, only about 6 yards.) A submerged sub moving at three knots (6000 yds per hour), can increase that circle of uncertaintly rapidly in an hour. A surfaced sub, running at flank, can increase it by 40,000 yards in that same hour. If the escort is not already at battlestations, or is out of position in the formation, the only way the ASW commander has a chance to engage (a very poor chance perhaps if the geometry and his speed advantage are bad) is by having excellent sensors and well-trained operators feeding information to a tracking team in CIC or the bridge, and that team making tactical recommendations to the ASW commander. If any link in that chain fails, the sub gets away without prosecution.

The game, as I conceeeded above, doesn't overtly model any of that. It gives an ASW TF a pretty good chance to detect a sub in a huge, 40-mile hex, a lot of the time. (To be fair, the Allies get this bennie too.) Airborne ASW helps, yes, but again, the plane offers a single datum; the sub displaces a LONG way before the surface assets can arrive. In open ocean, where many of my and Mike's losses occured, there simply isn't any RL way for the prosecutions we saw to have occured. The game is just built that way, however. But, I will say, that despite the Allies' ASW advantages built into the code which get better over time, I've never sunk three IJN subs in a week. I'm just sayin'.