I have never seen a carrier go down from a submarine attack. Has anyone else seen this?
It happened several times in ww2 so it should be possible.
It happened several times in ww2 so it should be possible.
can subs sink carriers?
- Thread starter uberjedi
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Yes I've seen it happen.
It's not as common as it should be though and Carrier planes early in the war are way to effective at sinking submarines compared to historical performance ( When Royal Navy sent out their CVs to hunt submarines in 1939 they became the hunted ones themself ).
It's not as common as it should be though and Carrier planes early in the war are way to effective at sinking submarines compared to historical performance ( When Royal Navy sent out their CVs to hunt submarines in 1939 they became the hunted ones themself ).
Do recall if the engagement in question had escorts present?
I've rarely seen submarines go after high-value targets, once the escorts show up, they tend to fire on the immediate threats primarily, instead of disengaging and attempting to reacquire the capital ships.
Seen several times and escorts can be present, but for a successful sinking they need to be chased away (disengaging) or sunk first by other ships or airpower.
In HoI4 naval engagements ships seem to target the first enemy ship coming in range, and this means subs like you say tend to target escorts first which are rushing forward at max speed. Carriers also seem to hang back until most of their escort is driven away.
Normally the only situation Carriers will be sunk by subs is if they have little or very damaged escorts and little or no planes.
At that point though, they should be disengaging. Ideally, subs in fleet actions would act according to your chosen doctrine and prioritize and hit targets and attempt to stay undetected as long as possible, and disengaging if things get hairy. Also, firing seems to always reveal the subs location, when this shouldn't necessarily be the case.
I would actually want to have the ship silhouette "direction" indicate if the ship is trying to move away or close on the enemy, preferably there'd be a frontal silhouette for ships keeping distance as well, and a special icon for ships retreating instead. Or they could just do-away with the whole side-view and simply have a top-down map and then you could actually have ships everywhere.
The interface is a bit hard to interpret in relation to what's actually going on (as ships move in relation to each-other but are "clustered/grouped" as icons) and you get weird sub-divisions of combats that tend to jump around when at edge-values. It's not getting any less confusing with the new expansion mechanics which draws ships into larger battles (for convoys etc). But I guess it'd have to wait until a naval-focused expansion/DLC to get that stuff fixed properly.
PDX knows the naval system in general, and subs in particular, are not working and are in serious need of a redo. Subs are worthless in game as it stands now, I always just delete mine on day one, and save myself the trouble of watching them die.
They have some uses, but sinking Carriers is not one of them
For example I use subs as a cheap & long range raider to sink enemy convoys and divisions transporting through far away waters that the enemy don't patrol, or as cheap throw-away scouts to see if you can spot what coastal provinces an enemy is guarding without exposing your main fleet.
They are also great at getting Naval supremacy cheaply and be able to launch invasions ( probably even OP at this since 1 sub give equal supremacy as 1 Battleship ).
Submarines don't have the speed to catch carriers or battleships, and so are useless against anything except convoys.
If you want to kill carriers, build your own fleet of battleships + carriers, or just rush naval bombers and use them on top of whatever (starting) fleet you have.
I can't speak from personal experience, but I did see last night, after three separate engagements that my level 2 land based NAV sank the USS Enterprise. . .
Submarines can deal great damage to capital ships as long as something keep the capital ships engaged and the capital ships lack Escort.
I sink large ships but mostly Battleships over Carriers in all my games and I find them useful. They need improvement, which they are getting in 1.5
Some say here that they are worthless which is not true. I am very happy if a have 10 subs and I meet a capital ship. My subs always win.
Some say here that they are worthless which is not true. I am very happy if a have 10 subs and I meet a capital ship. My subs always win.
They have some uses, but sinking Carriers is not one of them
For example I use subs as a cheap & long range raider to sink enemy convoys and divisions transporting through far away waters that the enemy don't patrol, or as cheap throw-away scouts to see if you can spot what coastal provinces an enemy is guarding without exposing your main fleet.
They are also great at getting Naval supremacy cheaply and be able to launch invasions ( probably even OP at this since 1 sub give equal supremacy as 1 Battleship ).
They're such an awkward unit. Tier 4 subs have great range, you can naval invade Denmark from Brazil w/o access or faction alignment.
Crappy as they are in naval combat, there's some kind of critical mass thing going on too:
That was NOT an outcome I was expecting after just spamming them as the only ship I'd bothered to research! Blowing screens and capital ships alike to pieces along with several planes (???) with pure subs? With no losses at all?!
But if you go in with small numbers they're junk for actual combat.
NAV 2 or better with radar is absolutely ruinous by itself. Bonus points for throwing a single sub or destroyer out as bait.
I'm wondering what kind of godly torpedoes your subs have to sink planes. I think subs can be pretty powerful if they have numbers on screens, but that's pretty unlikely unless you have 78 of them. Well done, a fine result for the mighty Nicaraguan navy - but how did you end up at war with the US? And, more importantly, surviving a war with the US?
Submarines in this timeframe usually had an AA gun for self-defence when surfaced, as well as a deck gun for surface action against defensless targets.
They are also a cheap way to bring convoys and ASW patrols into battle while NAVs hammer them.