Improving sub warfare realism

[unmerged(46715)]

This is not a new topic, but I was thinking those of us who are interested in this could discuss the issue, come up with suggestions, and arrive at workable solutions that Paradox could implement.

For starters, here are some statistics I was able to quickly dig up on the (2nd) Battle of the Atlantic.
http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html


Allied Ships Lost in the Atlantic
Year Total from Subs % Subs
1939 222 114 51%
1940 1059 471 44%
1941 1299 432 33%
1942 1664 1160 70%
1943 597 377 63%
1944 205 132 64%
1945 105 56 53%

U-Boat Losses
Sunk By 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 Total
Aircraft Carrier 0 2 3 36 140 68 40 289
Ships 5 11 24 32 59 68 17 216
Bombs 0 0 0 0 2 24 36 62
Mines 3 2 0 3 1 9 7 25
Submarines 1 2 1 2 4 5 3 18
Other 0 4 5 6 17 43 17 92
Total 9 23 35 86 236 235 122 746

So, that gives us an idea of how the real battle played out.


It's pretty obvious to everyone that naval bombers are way overpowered compared to subs when it comes to convoy raiding.

There needs to be more factoring in of the evolution of ASW aircraft carriers.

Surface raiders with a speed advantage compared to the nearby fleets should be able to avoid combat easier.

The minimum length of naval combat should not be fixed -- the faster fleet can break contact easier, while the slower fleet will find it very hard to disengage, and the magnitude of the speed difference will matter. Subs should have an extra bonus to retreating.

Someone else suggested a good idea of making subs have very low organization (that recovers quickly), thus allowing them to get in a few hits in the early part of a battle but preventing them from effectively fighting in massive fleet battles like surface warships do.

 

[Bhaal]

try the hsr 2.04 from stony road

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

You are thinking of Khumak's old idea, one that I think would partially solve the ahistorical problem of submarines.

"They made an interesting change to subs in HSR that seems to work pretty well. Org was reduced to 2% and all org increasing doctrines exclude subs (so they never get more than 2% org). In return sub morale was boosted to 120% and attack values significantly increased. Could still use some tweaking probably but the end result is that subs get 1 pretty powerful "first shot" off and then are out of org and have to flee.

Against a small fleet this is devastating. Against a large fleet it's suicide. Doesn't seem to have helped convoy raiding much but naval interdiction seems much improved now. Subs are now useful for that but not overpowered."

This sort of adjustment would prompt subs to disengage from combat almost instantly, a more realistic and tactically wise behavior than standing and fighting. Against capital ships, which have little or no submarine attack value, submarines would still be able to stick and around and get several shots off, crippling or destroying them. They would only be effective against lone or unescorted capital ships.

I still think subs need to be harder to spot, but at least this idea will give them propper rules of engagement.

* * *

As for naval bombers, I don't think their offensive capabilities should be toned down. They, and aircraft in general, are too damn durable. There is no way to effectively damage their strength. Aircraft carriers should be deadly to naval bombers, particularly if the bombers are not escorted by fighters. Bombers in general should be ripped to pieces if they caught by enemy fighters and unescorted, but as it stands they rarely lose anything beyond organization.

Continuing in the vein of aircraft carriers, I think they need a few additional abilities. Either:

-Each carrier add's a bonus (cumulative with multiple carriers) to the air defense value of every ship in the fleet. This represents the fighters providing air cover for the entire fleet, not just circling around their CV.

OR

-When two fleets fight, each carrier sends up it's CAG in the form of one understrength fighter stack and one understrength naval bomber stack. If only one side has a carrier, then the planes are free to attack the enemy ships just like land-based planes currently do. If both sides have carriers, the aircraft will fight eachother while simultaneously trying to bomb the other side's ships. Until the air battle is resolved, the negative "air combat" modifier will prevent each side's bombers from significantly damaging the other side's ships. Once combat is resolved, the winning side will be able to bomb ships at full effectiveness.

 

[unmerged(13933)]

I'm with you but some of these changes require code changes such as the minimum combat time. A small tweak is possible I suppose. The sub retreat bonus would propably be entirely new code.

What if we cut the naval bombers sea attack? Say with 25%. Would that help at all?

Does the HSR subs org change really work then? If so how? If sub sub goes to 0 org immediately in the 1st combat hour then it can't retreat until the minimum combat time has passed, right? So it would be toast?

Sub visibility cannot be cut much further but we could adjust the surface ships sub detection downwards. This is a difficult problem since we can only play with the unit values.

Sub stacks can be too big there's no question about it. Also while testing smaller sub stacks it comes clear that everything is fine if your not spotted
. Then once spotted it depends on the size and composition of the surface fleet what happens next. A subfleet of 1-2 sub units against a asw fleet of some 10 or more ships results in complete annihilation of the sub fleet. There is no variation to that result. I've tested this with lvl 4 subs on convoy raiding mission commanded by the best commanders available and using all but the 1942 doctrines.

 

[unmerged(46715)]

Sub stacks can be too big there's no question about it. Also while testing smaller sub stacks it comes clear that everything is fine if your not spotted
. Then once spotted it depends on the size and composition of the surface fleet what happens next. A subfleet of 1-2 sub units against a asw fleet of some 10 or more ships results in complete annihilation of the sub fleet. There is no variation to that result. I've tested this with lvl 4 subs on convoy raiding mission commanded by the best commanders available and using all but the 1942 doctrines.

Yep this is what frustrates me about subs... I want to use smaller groups but they will never survive an engagement. The 2 subs vs. 10 ship ASW fleet just doesn't capture the reality of what was going on. The subs RAN AWAY from those odds and disappeared into the Atlantic.

The other goofy thing about the game is that there are already convoy escorts, and to me that is where the real contest should be decided. The real warfleets were simply avoided by the subs.

Then there's the other extreme problem of 30-sub packs wiping out entire battlefleets... capital ships sunk on an ahistorical scale (by any enemy, let alone something silly like organized attacks by subs).

 

[unmerged(34454)]

Does "surprise" event still work at sea?

 

[mld0806]

It's an odd balance to capture. For example, the German and US sub doctrines emphasized enemy shipping and avoiding attacks on large combat units. Would they pounce on lightly defended capital ships from time to time? Certainly. Was that their main goal? Definitely not.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Japanese sub doctrine that, like their surface doctrine, focused on the sinking of enemy capital ships over sinking of enemy shipping.

The problem is finding a balance of the two. I think the 2% organization bit is somewhat dodgy, however. It leads to rapid retreat of the submarines, often ahistorically fast. Once a submarine group had success in an area, they were hunted mercilessly until they had to abandon that area or face anhiliation.

I would think that what is instead needed is a change in sub combat mechanics at the hard coding level. As it stands, submarines are hidden until detected by an enemy ship and then are visible to all in the fleet, becoming exactly as other surface ships in combat. Perhaps if submarines could be hidden to all ships, and detection done hourly per individual ship, then we'd see more of a realistic sub warfare model.

For example, 4 destroyers stumble upon 3 sub groups operating in the North Atlantic. Each hour, each individual destroyer flotilla attempts to detect each submarine group. If the flotilla detects the sub group, they can target and combat that group, but if the subs don't get detected, they don't get targeted. The submarines would maintain their "wait for capital ship shot" attitude like they currently do, but completely and totally avoid taking shots at escort ships like DDs and CLs. This would allow for submarine groups to try and "sneak away" from hunter/killer groups and avoid being targeted by large capital ships almost completely. If all submarines go undetected for an hour of combat, then the combat ends with the subs sneaking off into the depths without being attacked.

Dunno if this is even possible to do with the current engine, but I think it would be a far more accurate model than the current one, and far more accurate than the 2% model.

 

[unmerged(13933)]

It's an odd balance to capture. For example, the German and US sub doctrines emphasized enemy shipping and avoiding attacks on large combat units. Would they pounce on lightly defended capital ships from time to time? Certainly. Was that their main goal? Definitely not.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Japanese sub doctrine that, like their surface doctrine, focused on the sinking of enemy capital ships over sinking of enemy shipping.

The problem is finding a balance of the two. I think the 2% organization bit is somewhat dodgy, however. It leads to rapid retreat of the submarines, often ahistorically fast. Once a submarine group had success in an area, they were hunted mercilessly until they had to abandon that area or face anhiliation.

I would think that what is instead needed is a change in sub combat mechanics at the hard coding level. As it stands, submarines are hidden until detected by an enemy ship and then are visible to all in the fleet, becoming exactly as other surface ships in combat. Perhaps if submarines could be hidden to all ships, and detection done hourly per individual ship, then we'd see more of a realistic sub warfare model.

For example, 4 destroyers stumble upon 3 sub groups operating in the North Atlantic. Each hour, each individual destroyer flotilla attempts to detect each submarine group. If the flotilla detects the sub group, they can target and combat that group, but if the subs don't get detected, they don't get targeted. The submarines would maintain their "wait for capital ship shot" attitude like they currently do, but completely and totally avoid taking shots at escort ships like DDs and CLs. This would allow for submarine groups to try and "sneak away" from hunter/killer groups and avoid being targeted by large capital ships almost completely. If all submarines go undetected for an hour of combat, then the combat ends with the subs sneaking off into the depths without being attacked.

Dunno if this is even possible to do with the current engine, but I think it would be a far more accurate model than the current one, and far more accurate than the 2% model.

Yes, we need something like this. 1 vs 1 spotting first then it could be that once sub is spotted the DD could call for other DD's to help. Huh, it gets complicated but definitely the sub war needs some tweaking on the code side.

 

[unmerged(12544)]

HIP is using total max. sub org (depending on the naval tree) 5,5; 7; 8.5. The base org is 4. This in combination with the Starfire modifications for "convoy_def_eff" and "convoy_raiding" is working very well. You have to balance two things here, subs should retreat fast against many DDs, but NOT instantly, because then the DDs can not do enough damage to them.
Org plays no role for convoy raiding against unprotected convoys, that does not touch sub org. And they regain org very fast in ports, so I see no need to raise their morale. You could even argue, that their morale should be lowered to keep them a few days in port, not just hours.
I also see no need to raise their attack values. They can do a lot of damage to big fleets without DD protection. What has to be balanced here is a very low sub_attack value of all ships with guns (firing at the snorkel).

 

[unmerged(5110)]

Hey George S Patton,

These stats are AMAZING, can you put them up on the HoI2 wiki, please?

http://hoi2.nsen.ch/

 

[unmerged(39735)]

Does the HSR subs org change really work then? If so how? If sub sub goes to 0 org immediately in the 1st combat hour then it can't retreat until the minimum combat time has passed, right? So it would be toast?

It actually does work pretty well. They do damage in all 4 combat hours and then they always retreat. I'm guessing the 120% morale is the key to that. Generally fleets that have lots of DDs don't take much damage from subs and the subs take heavy losses. Against large fleets with CLs but no DDs subs do significant damage but don't usually sink much and they don't take many losses themselves. Against any sized fleet with either no screening ships or very small numbers of screening ships subs do massive damage and take little to no losses.

For convoy raiding it doesn't appear to have changed anything. I still get tons of popups about finding convoys that are too well protected so I just stick to interdiction with them for now.

BTW it's not my idea it was Aregorn's (lead scripter for HSR).