Are Submarines Worthless? - revisited for AoD 1.12.

[Pang Bingxun]

Yet how does that differ from subs being on Convoy Raiding at night, but with Force engagement checked?

The Convoy Raiding missions tells the unit to avoid battles. NCP tells the unit to seek battles.

NCP is essentially Interdiction and Convoy Raiding at the same time.

There may be other hidden differences, but i have no proof of such differences. Maybe the mission is still a bit more aggressive.

Force engagement seems to apply once a battle has already started and tells the unit to keep an existing engagement active. It may also tell the unit to seek engagement more aggressively, but i have no proof for that.

 

[Acheron]

I wonder, is it better to have subs roam freely in a seazone or assign them one sea-province and try to build a bar a convoy cannot evade?

 

[MJF]

I wonder, is it better to have subs roam freely in a seazone or assign them one sea-province and try to build a bar a convoy cannot evade?

Me too. The single sea Province idea is meant to attract ASW's, where normally the sub(s) would be "Sitting ducks." My idea was to attract that, then have my nearby or blocking power destroy the UK ASW fleets.

It was working for a while. During Sealion it would probably be better either to use them as a massed combat fleet in a province, or widen their scope, area covered and range - i.e., get them out of the way...?

 

[Acheron]

What about having a subfleet convoy hunting in a province and having warfleet on naval inderdiction in the very same province? Would a potential ASW fleet rush into the warfleet unaware?

 

[MJF]

What about having a subfleet convoy hunting in a province and having warfleet on naval inderdiction in the very same province? Would a potential ASW fleet rush into the warfleet unaware?

That was my next try...

 

[Pang Bingxun]

What about having a subfleet convoy hunting in a province and having warfleet on naval inderdiction in the very same province? Would a potential ASW fleet rush into the warfleet unaware?

Why not have both on NCP limited to that one province? It will be more effective.

In general i believe it to be more sensical to limit to one province. The obvious advantage is to to safe fuel.

The second advantage is that it increases likelyhood to find something in that province by a lot, but of course only if there is something to find there. So in my mind the key is to choose which provinces to rigorously check for enemy presence and which provinces to leave empty yourself. And of course NCP does the earlier best. Sooner or later NCP cleans out any enemy presence in a sea province. Once that has occured and is reasonably safe to stay that way for a few days, new provinces need to be chosen.

Giving some good thought in selecting few (or just one) province to concentrate your forces seems like the best way to go for me, at least in general.

Your idea to build up an impassable bar is another natural approach. I expect it to have some success, but maybe not the kind of success one should hope for. If you donnot have a clue where to concentrate your forces, this is one way to go and it is not a bad idea, but chances are that there is a better approach, at least at some time.

Roaming freely seem like a bad idea. Of course it will have some success at some point. But you risk opening up provinces for being safe for convoys all the time. Of course you do want there to be provinces where convoys pass trough and therefore there need to be provinces that are considered safe. But once a convoy passes through a province there should be little to no delay till you do some serios sinkings there. If the delay is greater than a few hours the delay is likely too large.

 

[PB-DK]

???

there is a bug in the naval deployment for ai, as they will deploy to a stack that is currently under repair and so be "stuck" there until that ship repairs itself and that can take a long time

 

[Acheron]

My impression recently was, that 2-3 sub fleets get wiped out if they run in two or so destroyers, even ancient ones. Stacks of six or more submarines may (!) have a casualty or two before disengaging. And the AI will send their destroyers far after your subs, I had German destroyers in the Caribbean.

I think I will use subs in waters where I either also have a surface fleet available or naval bombers in range. Now, my naval bombers got hit badly in the Pacific when some Japanese or Manchurian fighter group ran into them, have to send them into sea areas out of range. But I think I will keep a group ready and available to go after any destroyers attacking my subs in my next game.

 

[MJF]

My impression recently was, that 2-3 sub fleets get wiped out if they run in two or so destroyers, even ancient ones. Stacks of six or more submarines may (!) have a casualty or two before disengaging. And the AI will send their destroyers far after your subs, I had German destroyers in the Caribbean.

In this game you can't retreat from a Naval combat for 4 hours. That's a lot of depth charges to have to sit by and watch!

I think I will use subs in waters where I either also have a surface fleet available or naval bombers in range. Now, my naval bombers got hit badly in the Pacific when some Japanese or Manchurian fighter group ran into them, have to send them into sea areas out of range. But I think I will keep a group ready and available to go after any destroyers attacking my subs in my next game.

Yep. Can't use Escort Fighters on NAVs in the Pacific -- or probably anywhere else, really.

My guess as of late is that you either need 1 sub in each of the individual sea provinces you want to cover, raiding at night, and hope they evade detection, get away, or are easily replaced, or Three or more groups of stacks of 9 (27-36 total!), all nearby each other, to "duke-it-out" with SAGs and CTFs.

As others have reported, ASW is too over-powered early on ('39-'42...), esp vs Sealane Interdiction Doctrine.