this would be an understatement. Subs + TACs aren't just particularly deadly right now. They're decisively game-winning for the Axis at the moment from what I've seen in the last 3-4 days. Allied players may develop some counter meta, but I haven't seen it yet.
How are you supposed to use subs?
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this would be an understatement. Subs + TACs aren't just particularly deadly right now. They're decisively game-winning for the Axis at the moment from what I've seen in the last 3-4 days. Allied players may develop some counter meta, but I haven't seen it yet.
This sounds more like a TAC thing than a sub thing though - wouldn't the TACs be close to being able to do the job on their own, and wouldn't a surface fleet work just as well (and potentially better than) subs here? Once the TACs are dominating the sky and smashing enemy fleets, then the unit on the surface sounds like it's secondary. I don't play MP, apologies if I've missed any obvious MP things here.
Well, a significant part of the problem here is that ASW is absurdly, ahistorically effective *in the earliest years of the war*. Level I Destroyers are absolute submarine murderers as soon as war breaks out, no matter how much Convoy Raiding doctrine you've researched, no matter if you have a Level 5 Seawolf like Doenitz himself leading the fleet.
This in no way reflects historical reality.
In my last game playing as USA, a single Level I Japanese Destroyer was patrolling sea of New Guinea. I use sub fleets of 3-4 subs max, no bigger, per ocean area. This single Japanese Destroyer sank submarine flotilla after flotilla of mine. The thing was invincible. And it's completely ridiculous.
The only way to use Subs effectively is to sweep the seas first with large Carrier and/or Battleship fleets, eliminate the enemy surface vessels, and then send your subs in to convoy raid in completely undefended waters. Needless to say, this is hardly a viable strategy playing as Germany.
As things still stand in HOI4 -- over a year after release -- Submarine warfare remains completely unbalanced and unhistorical. There is no "Happy Time" where submarine wolfpacks are a genuine menace. Any Destroyers -- not to mention Cruisers and Battleships, which magically have ASW capabilities (and this should be eliminated) -- will decimate your sub fleets in short order.
Until Pdox decides to rebalance naval combat -- including submarine and ASW capabilities, and it's well past time they did so -- there's no point in building Subs. Use your resources elsewhere.
This in no way reflects historical reality.
In my last game playing as USA, a single Level I Japanese Destroyer was patrolling sea of New Guinea. I use sub fleets of 3-4 subs max, no bigger, per ocean area. This single Japanese Destroyer sank submarine flotilla after flotilla of mine. The thing was invincible. And it's completely ridiculous.
The only way to use Subs effectively is to sweep the seas first with large Carrier and/or Battleship fleets, eliminate the enemy surface vessels, and then send your subs in to convoy raid in completely undefended waters. Needless to say, this is hardly a viable strategy playing as Germany.
As things still stand in HOI4 -- over a year after release -- Submarine warfare remains completely unbalanced and unhistorical. There is no "Happy Time" where submarine wolfpacks are a genuine menace. Any Destroyers -- not to mention Cruisers and Battleships, which magically have ASW capabilities (and this should be eliminated) -- will decimate your sub fleets in short order.
Until Pdox decides to rebalance naval combat -- including submarine and ASW capabilities, and it's well past time they did so -- there's no point in building Subs. Use your resources elsewhere.
This, exactly. After some prerequisites are met, the Axis can effectively strangle the Allies ability to wage war by sinking their entire inventory of convoys. The last three multiplayer games I was a part of have all gone more or less the same way - always resulting in an overwhelming Axis Victory:
- Axis capitulates Poland, the low-countries and France (the usual opening of any MP game).
- Axis takes North Africa.
- Note: Preventing the fall of North Africa is literally the only hope the Allies have for victory (short of Axis incompetence). Morocco now has the highest level of strategic importance - it should be guarded as fiercely as the Suez Canal.
- Axis fortifies Morocco and takes Gibraltar. They build up the air fields and install radar.
- Axis floods the Iberian Coast and African Coast with Naval Bombers, Fighters and Tactical Bombers taking off from Morocco and Canary Islands. The Allies cannot contest this airspace in any meaningful way because the nearest Allied air-fields are too distant.
- The Axis sorties submarines set to convoy raiding throughout the Atlantic, but especially in the zones in which it has total and uncontested air supremacy.
- The Allies watch helplessly as their defenseless convoys sail their pre-programmed tracks into killing fields of submarines and naval bombers. Any attempt to contest these zones will result in the loss of surface fleets or aircraft.
- Allies begin to suffer massive attrition to their convoy stockpiles. Trade efficiency dwindles, and troops are literally unable to transit the sea.
- Trade with the USSR becomes impossible, and they no longer receive factories from the Allies.
- A weakened USSR is invaded by Axis and cannot hope to receive support in the form of a D-Day or even lend-lease.
- Game is over, Axis Victory.
6 subs were ever in a wolf pack. most were 3. the type II A was horrible sub mostly used along coasts which in game has really high radar which is why English channel is death trap. most subs worked as a lone wolf. so putting in game only one games sense and you really need the sea doctrine on right side for the subs too. to lower their visibility. that is a stack able trait in game.
good lord your allies, Italy, has a lot of planes. 919?This, exactly. After some prerequisites are met, the Axis can effectively strangle the Allies ability to wage war by sinking their entire inventory of convoys. The last three multiplayer games I was a part of have all gone more or less the same way - always resulting in an overwhelming Axis Victory:
Add a Fascist Sweden to the mix doing the same strategy in the North Atlantic and the situation only gets worse. There are certainly counters, and ways the mitigate the effects of this strategy, but at the most you're just slowing the bleeding.
- Axis capitulates Poland, the low-countries and France (the usual opening of any MP game).
- Axis takes North Africa.
- Note: Preventing the fall of North Africa is literally the only hope the Allies have for victory (short of Axis incompetence). Morocco now has the highest level of strategic importance - it should be guarded as fiercely as the Suez Canal.
- Axis fortifies Morocco and takes Gibraltar. They build up the air fields and install radar.
- Axis floods the Iberian Coast and African Coast with Naval Bombers, Fighters and Tactical Bombers taking off from Morocco and Canary Islands. The Allies cannot contest this airspace in any meaningful way because the nearest Allied air-fields are too distant.
- The Axis sorties submarines set to convoy raiding throughout the Atlantic, but especially in the zones in which it has total and uncontested air supremacy.
- The Allies watch helplessly as their defenseless convoys sail their pre-programmed tracks into killing fields of submarines and naval bombers. Any attempt to contest these zones will result in the loss of surface fleets or aircraft.
- Allies begin to suffer massive attrition to their convoy stockpiles. Trade efficiency dwindles, and troops are literally unable to transit the sea.
- Trade with the USSR becomes impossible, and they no longer receive factories from the Allies.
- A weakened USSR is invaded by Axis and cannot hope to receive support in the form of a D-Day or even lend-lease.
- Game is over, Axis Victory.
The sub doctrines (iirc - I've been known not to) increase convoy raiding efficiency and the chance of spotting convoys, but they don't reduce sub visibility.
Also, it's worth noting the largest wolf packs were larger than 6, not as small as 3 - from this page, you'll see the largest is over 30. However, even if subs were meant to be used individually, and even if they worked appropriately (which they don't - individual subs are still spotted far, far too easily by patrolling surface ships, and it's fairly unusual for subs to sink surface ships, when in WW2 the Royal Navy lost more warships to submarine torpedo than any other cause, and if subs find an unescorted convoy they destroy it completely - something that afaik never happened), then the UI for managing submarines is atrocious (and the AI needs to be taught how to use them in that way as well).
That's not to say your tactics aren't effective - they are - they just rely on some pretty large historically implausible holes in the way the game mechanics work.
Exactly! Once North Africa is secured, Italy can focus on building aircraft to dominate the trade nodes. Having such an overwhelming amount of naval bombers / tactical bombers creates an impenetrable bastion for the submarines to do their work.
The issue for the Allies is that even though they know it is suicide to enter those sea / air zones, the convoy's routes can't be altered.
I suppose they would, but submarines are cheap, and relatively expendable. Plus you can free up your surface fleet for other jobs by using submarines to raid convoys. I agree though - this whole strategy takes advantage of the static trade lanes.
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This is absolutely spot on. Best response by far regarding this entire topic.
If it is on the internet it must be true then....right?
Wolfpack is a loose term for how they the sub commanders in a flotilla worked. when you build a sub in game you build one and stack them in a flotilla. http://uboat.net/flotillas/2flo.htm
a lot of the info we have about german sub warfare came from UK tracking them.....so the wolfpacks that you show in the link are names of groups of u-boats that UK knew at the time where in that region due to enigma code hackers reading german mail. those are code names that the uk used for tracking the subs in an area. that is not the name of the wolfpack.
much of the info about actual wolfpacks went down with the subs in the sub manifest. each sub commander was given orders which may or may not coordinate with others sub commanders. where I am getting 6 and 3 is from surviving sub commanders talking about how they coordinated with other known subs in a mission. that doesn't mean they are the actual wolfpack but are working together and may or may not be in the same flotilla.
I don't think the game can ever get this right due to how loose and fluid the interaction was between subs in regions. so in game it is almost best bet to have them in 1 flotilla but managing 30 single subs is a pain.
the sub visibility is reduced by variants. In HOI3 or HOI2 they use to have a doctrine that reduced sub visibility. I thought i was raider patrol but clearly now looking at the HOI4wiki that was my mistake.
The idea of a wolfpack, iirc, was a doctrine developed by Donitz in the interwar period wasn't it? My understanding was that in the context of the German u-boat operations, it related to groups of submarines brought together, often to target a specific convoy (you're quite right in that wolf packs weren't a long-term administrative unit). The point I was responding to was:
I used uboat.net because I could easily link it for you (and it tends to be fairly reliable, although no source, internet or print, is perfect), but am happy to provide more robust sources. There are numerous German sources (including more than a few primary German sources translated into English) and u-boat operations are very well documented in this context. Taking the Panther pack, from Jurgen Rohwer's (a leading German Naval Historian, who has written works that are u-boat specific, but I have the Chronology ready at hand) Chronology of the War at Sea, it notes (on p. 200):
I can look up other packs if you like, but I'm confident we'll find numerous wolf packs with more than 6 submarines. In terms of Rohwer's credentials, he's one of the editors of U-Boat Attack Logs, and the author of Axis Submarine Successes of World War Two, and Critical Convoy Battles of WW2 (and he's cited by other authors whose opinions I respect), so I'd bet good money he knows what he's talking about. Rohwer aside, I haven't come across a single source on the Battle of the Atlantic that doesn't mention wolf packs containing significant numbers of submarines. It may be the case that the books I've read are poorly put together, but I'd think it'd be unlikely that all of my sources were wrong.
This isn't to say that there weren't, of course, also numerous subs working independently (most subs, most of the time), and wolf packs aren't permanent formations but rather brought together for specific purposes, unlike HoI4 flotillas. I'm just noting that large wolf packs did exist. I'm not arguing that the best possible gameplay mechanic is to use a wolf-pack focussed system - that's another issue entirely.
For example, while there were convoy battles between large numbers of u-boats and convoys/escorts (for example, in response to HX 231, Germany deployed a line of 15 u-boats to intercept, while 15 u-boats were initially ordered to attack ONS 5), a large number of sinkings (iirc the majority, but memory's a bit hazy here) were merchant ships sailing independently, while the vast majority of warships sunk were not in the course of convoy battles but targets of opportunity for lone u-boats. A number of suggestions have been made regarding mechanics to better represent the submarine's role in the war at sea, and I agree that if it wasn't possible to have a system that could manage both wolf packs and lone subs at the same time, that a lone subs model would be the best representation (rather than our current 'all wolf pack' model).
Am very happy to be put straight on any of the points I've made above (or look up further details if you're not convinced) - just trying to set the record straight, definitely not trying to bend it
.No worries at all, there's a lot of little details when it comes to looking into how subs work in HoI4 (or HoI3) - I've been looking very closely at how subs work within the game for the mod I'm working on, which was the only reason I was confident about that.
Aircraft have pretty poor detection of ships on their own, outside radar coverage. The submarines can act as spotters, making the TACs far more effective.
Thanks for the info (although it's curdling my brain a little from a historical plausibility perspective, but I'll live
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Honestly. PDS shouldn't sit back and accept that crappy solution.
It should be simulated in a way that it doesn't matter how large your sub fleet is. Examples:
a) 20 * 2 subs
b) 1 * 40 subs
Both should lead to the same result. The game should simulate those 40 subs fighting in small groups, not all in one.
It should suffice to give a penalty of overstacking in 1 region!
Suppose you order the 1 stack of 40 subs to raid in 3 regions, then it should simply check: 40/3 > region limit? If yes, apply penalty. Else, no modifier applied.
The stacks could automatically be simulated to act in groups of 2-3 subs and then only that sub-stack (no pun intended) would be engaged in combat while the rest of the stack is somewhere else.
I don't see the point in being forced to micro those buggers.
If people want more control, easy solution: Let the player pick the desired wolfpack size. Stack of 40 subs, set on 5 per sub-stack for instance.
I think you are completely off as to which part of the system is broken. It has nothing to do with fleet sizes.
The part that is broken is a mistake they have made in every other version of HOI. They keep insisting that subs go about their business using the same combat mechanics as other ships. It would all be much simpler and more accurate if they developed a completely separate set of mechanics for resolving sub engagements. Make it more abstract than the other combat system.
There are also some 'easy wins' in making subs far less detectable by surface fleets. At the moment, DD_1s will effectively pick up SS_4s while patrolling (ie, the DD_1s will find and sink the SS_4s), which would be unlikely even if the DD_1s had been fitted with the latest sonar and were sailing around hunting. Longer-term, though, I fully agree a separate system for subs is worth implementing.
That might well be true. Quite frankly, I don't really care how they do it. I just want a solution that allows a more macro submarine control. If it was up to me, I wouldn't even simulate them as regular vessels. Why not treat them like convoys. Have a number of subs in your stockpile. Assign a percentage to reserve and to each naval region you like (percentage not actual number for ease of management). The subs performance depends on variables like number of convoys/hostile ships etc. in that region and thus the number of sinks and losses is calculated. What benefit do we have from micro'ing each sub?
The main benefit from the 'subs in fleet battles' thing is you can have a crack at proper convoy battles, or things like the sinkings US subs achieved at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Both are pretty problematic (if we're looking for historically plausible mechanics) in the current set-up though, because of escorts not sailing with convoys, and sub behaviour in convoy battles, in the first, and the way it plays out in fleet actions for the second. It's worth noting that in the interwar period, iirc, many (at one stage most) navies build large, fleet-going subs that were intended to operate with the battle fleet - and Japan had a crack at making this work in WW2 (not the reason they lost, but it wasn't one of their strongpoints).
The second option could be achieved by having a toggle for subs to 'engage fleets' or something like that, with the risks and benefits that involves, and possibly get better results than trying to squeeze them into the naval combat mechanics. Convoy battles are probably best played out on the map as a naval battle, if that was possible, but they'd need a fair bit of work to get right - but would be cool if it could happen.
Just my 2 cents, as always ignore if not helpful/interesting/etc
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Follow Dalwin's advice:
I'd also say if you are playing as a major power scrap all the level 1 (WW1 ?) subs at the beginning, with the exception of the Soviet subs in the Black Sea. They may be worth hanging on to for minors. Use level II + as advised by Dalwin.
Someday maybe they'll fix the submarine / ASW warfare and make it perhaps more like the new air warfare. At the moment it's like a badly functioning extension of surface naval warfare. Surface naval warfare also needs fixing as battles last too long and in doing so probably take out too many ships in one action.
I'd also say if you are playing as a major power scrap all the level 1 (WW1 ?) subs at the beginning, with the exception of the Soviet subs in the Black Sea. They may be worth hanging on to for minors. Use level II + as advised by Dalwin.
Someday maybe they'll fix the submarine / ASW warfare and make it perhaps more like the new air warfare. At the moment it's like a badly functioning extension of surface naval warfare. Surface naval warfare also needs fixing as battles last too long and in doing so probably take out too many ships in one action.