Convoy Raiding in 1.3

[robot42]

Since each sub is worth 135 convoys in IC you really need to sink to many right now.

I think apart from that cost there is also the 6(?) different techs for building your subs and then another 4(?) or so doctrine techs to keep up to date, that is a very large investment and then to have to sink 135 convoys without taking damage yourself to recoup some of the costs seams quite insane.

The only way i can see it working is that you first build a large surface fleet, go and sink every enemy ship and then send everything you have convoy hunting without resistance, and then even with all that i doubt you can sink them faster than the enemy can build them.

In my current game as Italy my subs sunk 10 convoys maybe in a year in the med, several sunk and also at the same time the british only sunk about the same of mine, it just doesn't have any serious effect atm.

 

[dilk]

sounds like that strated there a dicussion at last

like krieger11b I also trying convoy raiding with cruisers (esp. battlecruisers, Ilove them) now. therefore I started a game as GER yesterday in that I research NO sub techs but on the other side techs for surface ships.

another issue beside the non existent cost efficiency of subs is that they are very hard to handle. in HOI2 at least I had sea zones in different colors. So sending a wolfpack in each colored zone was qpite easy. but now I only have the blue of the ocean. so I take one wolfpack and say go to there. and then I go back to bordeaux taking the second and so on. and at the sixth wolfpack I start wondering where I have to send to the next one without too much overlapping and too many holes in the net.
IMO we need seperate marine HQs so we can tell the here are some subs, now do some warfare with it in the Atlantic and take care of them when they are damaged.
at the moment it is, as I said in my first post, a micromanagement nightmare!

 

[robot42]

i really dislike the way naval orders are given atm, as italy i wanted to do a marine landing near athens (after i kinda provoked the allies into an early war while fighting romania) so i wanted to get my surface fleets to patrol around greece to provide defence of the transport flotilla and hopefully hold of any fleet if i was unlucky and allow my invasion to continue, but my fleets just kinda drifted off into completely different places, one was off the coast of africa, near all the UK ports which contained superior fleets no less, another up near the france coast (that didn't end well) and the 3rd was kinda doing laps of crete, so i guess it was close to where i wanted.

In the end i abandanded the invasion and just dumped the marines in annexed albania and had a more drawn out conflict. Also as mentioned above without a separate naval HQ there is no way to tell the ai how to use the fleets assigned to it, atleast with land units you can set a stance and some objectives there is no way to tell the ai to use my subs to kill the convoys near africa as opposed to sending them into the atlantic or even the indian ocean as ive seen happen.

 

[buglepong]

I've had no go with subs at all in 1.3. 10 subs full tech to '42, 2 packs trying to raid up and down east spain and france. 0 convoys sunk. ZERO. I've had more luck with NAV.

What's even more insulting is that a group of UK subs intercepts my subs and wipes them out with no losses.

 

[Subcomandante]

What Emu did in his submarine trials was to cordon off the whole Atlantic to get his results. And iirc he didn't just use one line of subs but two. Just to position them off Spain is not enough as they will move elsewhere.

 

[Alex_brunius]

What Emu did in his submarine trials was to cordon off the whole Atlantic to get his results. And iirc he didn't just use one line of subs but two. Just to position them off Spain is not enough as they will move elsewhere.

Thats not our problem here though, we are capable of sinking convoys (and many of them) just fine.

However convoys & escorts are just too cheap to replace and the subs to expensive to repair for it to have any strategic effect on the national level.

A Single sub costs the same amount of IC that 72 escorts do for example. 72 escorts is enough to protect an entire ocean of convoy routes and inflict heavy casualties to say 40 enemy subs raiding it.

I think part of the problem is that convoy & escorts aren't tied to practical values, if they were their base price could be made much higher and USA+UK could still build large amounts when their Shipyards have geared up.

I've had no go with subs at all in 1.3. 10 subs full tech to '42, 2 packs trying to raid up and down east spain and france. 0 convoys sunk. ZERO. I've had more luck with NAV.

Did you try looking at their "Sunk ships" tabs? Some players have reported popups not always appearing for sunk convoys, And Im suspecting something is fishy with it too.