I've posted this elsewhere before, but I'll post it again. A fleet of Sub I and IIs against the US. It was pretty much a deathblow for the US in that game.
Submarines are still garbage
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I've posted this elsewhere before, but I'll post it again. A fleet of Sub I and IIs against the US. It was pretty much a deathblow for the US in that game.
There's some kind of break point, this is from last patch even:
Not only did they win, but they downed multiple large ships and a few planes without casualties.
They're also reasonable for long-range, this is as communist Australia with no military access:
Yes, I've hit with > 100, advanced subs win trades vs the AI pretty soundly. I do have the doctrines for them.
For minors this is a nice setup because the initial cost outlay to get naval invasions vs other minors is minimal, but with one tech and doctrine focus you can still be meaningful.
I wouldn't try it against human carrier fleets, NAV, and retreat micro.
So point taken is: there is NOTHING inherently disadvantageous about having large counts of subs in a single fleet. Glad to know that, as my utter devastation of 98 Type U-IIA with Donitz in command would have suggested differently to me. Probably other factors at play like green crews, outdated tech, lots of enemy air asw, etc.
Also depends on how many and how advanced DDs they face... In both screenshots it's clear the subs outnumber the DDs at least 6-1 or more ( and probably have higher average tech level too), and even then they did take hefty casualties in the fight involving DDs.
A player building 1940 DDs can squash any hopes of subs being useful vs fleets since they got 60% higher sub attack, enough evasion to be near immune to torpedoes and 100% higher hp compared to 1922 DDs.
You might have sent them through the Channel/auto-ordered them to patrol an area, where they went through the Channel, which is suicide. Before Brest becomes avaliable, I usually manually sneak the subs along the Norwegian coast, over Scapa Flow and into the Atlantic to hunt trade, they rarely get disturbed there.
My question though with the new war support / stability stuff WHY is the convoy war not affecting it? I tried ( for science and kicks ) to see if i could force britain out of the war simply by strategic warfare, by 1943 they had 0 convoys, 0 industry ( i had 4k strat bombers leveling the entire island ) india had fallen to japan and the only thing keeping them afloat with equipment was the lend lease from america ( which was down to 0 convoys in 1944 ) still 0 impact on war support, even nuking ( by 1946 ) califonia, washington, london, toronto had 0 affect on the war, sure i got events and some flavor text but a complete waste of material; both forces were down to 20 boats combined by that point i had total global control of the waters in the world as well as the air. And another thing, why is bombing war support capped at -30% as england was both in a offensive / defensive war they together with all the other stuff they NEVER went under 90% war support ( and thats with my -30% impact due to "bombing" )?
And on the sub note, submarines are fantastic overall, always have in my experience just dont try to pick odd fights across the board, i just deploy them in the atlantic in MINIMUM 5 subs per fleet, then assign each dockyard production to each individual fleet so they constantly replentish sub fleets and by mid 42/43 they then to be 30+ and just wreck the shit out of all the convoys in the atlantic and usually win against any smaller asw fleets ( just make sure to get the doctrines for it AND dont fuck around with type 2 subs as they are crap go for the type 7's immediatly ( VIIC ) max stealth first then go for the rest of the stats.
And on the sub note, submarines are fantastic overall, always have in my experience just dont try to pick odd fights across the board, i just deploy them in the atlantic in MINIMUM 5 subs per fleet, then assign each dockyard production to each individual fleet so they constantly replentish sub fleets and by mid 42/43 they then to be 30+ and just wreck the shit out of all the convoys in the atlantic and usually win against any smaller asw fleets ( just make sure to get the doctrines for it AND dont fuck around with type 2 subs as they are crap go for the type 7's immediatly ( VIIC ) max stealth first then go for the rest of the stats.
A major Naval warfare redesign is the next big thing that many in the community are waiting since long time. Hopefully soon..
I love my U-Boats.
Germany: when war breaks out, I send my Kriegsmarine under Raeder and all of my U-Boats under Doenitz into East North Sea region. They are supported by 200 fighters and 200 nav bombers and full radar, you always go full radar.
In other words, total domination from air and sea in 1 sea region.
Once you got 1940 sub tech, pick the sub NF which lets you rush the electro sub 1944 tech (50% blueprint bonus).
By 1942 you can mass produce 1944 subs fully pimped with naval xp.
The other region to rule is Bay of Biscay, again with all support.
Let's just say that I sometimes sink 250+ convoys in a single engagement.
Subs rule if used properly and concentrated with all support needed incl radar. And no: you don't have to micro one bit. Might be better, but not necessary.
Germany: when war breaks out, I send my Kriegsmarine under Raeder and all of my U-Boats under Doenitz into East North Sea region. They are supported by 200 fighters and 200 nav bombers and full radar, you always go full radar.
In other words, total domination from air and sea in 1 sea region.
Once you got 1940 sub tech, pick the sub NF which lets you rush the electro sub 1944 tech (50% blueprint bonus).
By 1942 you can mass produce 1944 subs fully pimped with naval xp.
The other region to rule is Bay of Biscay, again with all support.
Let's just say that I sometimes sink 250+ convoys in a single engagement.
Subs rule if used properly and concentrated with all support needed incl radar. And no: you don't have to micro one bit. Might be better, but not necessary.
I only know that this pic together with the movie quote got me an infraction once.
Not sure how he feels about that one. Get back to him later after he thinks about it.
To be more precise about the radar: I mean highest currently researched level built in the adjacent land province.
Interesting stuff. So subs are very potent at sinking convoys IF you hold their hand and follow the tech/national focus tree sufficiently to make them potent.
Hmmm: is that realistic?
My superficial understanding of the Battle of the Atlantic: I was not aware that German air reconnaissance/naval interdiction and radar played any significant role in the Battle of the Atlantic proper. Nor was I aware that land-based radar of any nation played a significant role. Ship-based radar (only on large vessels until late) might have had some limited impact, but not sure if a surfaced submarine was sufficiently detectable. Aircraft based radar did play some role late in the war, and I seem to recall that air interdiction did become increasingly potent from the North American coast by 1942-43.
In 1939, Donitz had about ~1/3 of what he projected he needed to starve England. I've only ever seen reference to "number of subs" never any specific mentioning of techs, doctrines, radars, air recon support, etc. as being part of Donitz "what I need" projections. Thus, it would seem to me: if you build ~300 to 350 type VIIs as Donitz envisioned, have them properly pimped with tech/doctrines/etc., and then properly deploy them with "large fleets" in a strip down the middle of the Atlantic, that should do the trick, no?
If someone can educate me on these points I appreciate it, otherwise my conclusion is that the game design is doing a bad job of reflecting the actual historical ebb and flow of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Hmmm: is that realistic?
My superficial understanding of the Battle of the Atlantic: I was not aware that German air reconnaissance/naval interdiction and radar played any significant role in the Battle of the Atlantic proper. Nor was I aware that land-based radar of any nation played a significant role. Ship-based radar (only on large vessels until late) might have had some limited impact, but not sure if a surfaced submarine was sufficiently detectable. Aircraft based radar did play some role late in the war, and I seem to recall that air interdiction did become increasingly potent from the North American coast by 1942-43.
In 1939, Donitz had about ~1/3 of what he projected he needed to starve England. I've only ever seen reference to "number of subs" never any specific mentioning of techs, doctrines, radars, air recon support, etc. as being part of Donitz "what I need" projections. Thus, it would seem to me: if you build ~300 to 350 type VIIs as Donitz envisioned, have them properly pimped with tech/doctrines/etc., and then properly deploy them with "large fleets" in a strip down the middle of the Atlantic, that should do the trick, no?
If someone can educate me on these points I appreciate it, otherwise my conclusion is that the game design is doing a bad job of reflecting the actual historical ebb and flow of the Battle of the Atlantic.
I've tried to make 6 fleet of 4 subs each with Germany, and I've send them in different naval areas. They were Type VIIC, with some naval xp spend into discretion and speed.
In less than 10s (one or two days as I play at max speed), they were all lying on the bottom of the ocean.
In less than 10s (one or two days as I play at max speed), they were all lying on the bottom of the ocean.
If the Allies send convoys through the Bay of Biscay and East North Sea, then it is perfectly realistic that 1944 electro U-Boats with full air and radar coverage run rampant on the convoys.
The Allies wouldn't have used that route though and if they send the convoys through mid and north Atlantic, then my U-Boats won't have that massive support thus making them vulnerable to the Allied surface fleet and bombers.
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#Doenitz
I loved his interviews in the BBC series "World at War", particularly his pronounciation of "submarines" which sounded like "soupmarines". He was a fool though. Check the numbers, by 1943 he had his envisioned number of soupmarines at his disposal and ironically that was the point where they became moot.
Bottom line: A one-dimensional weapon always loses to a multi-dimensional enemy (surface fleet plus recon plus bombers). The fallacy is to think that you simply have to multiply the numbers of your one-dimensional weapon in order to win. No, 10 times more U-Boats wouldn't have changed anything by mid-1943.
Well if you guys like sub warfare.
With italy you can take madagascar on day 1, unless UK have a fleet there or france spend troops on that island its impossible to defend and you can always go for another indian ocean island or even another africa dockyard. You only need 2 troops for each dock you want to actually keep. (1 infra + 2-3 naval forts and its yours forever)
From there you can also try to take some island on the atlantic by "jumping" and make the whole ocean complete available to the axis
.
When the axis have acess to the whole ocean. The allies job becomes much more difficulty.
Add a fall of Suez and you have a good chance of making the import of oil from asia close to impossible.
All of that because a italian player spent 2-6 pure infantary troops on some out of the box strategy.
If spain join axis it becomes so easy that i used it everytime i played said country.
With Spain if you join axis you don´t need italy. Spain can easily take Daakar and from there take Saint Helena. That opens the atlantic and South america.
But why stop there? if you take south america. (DOW brazil if needed ) you can jump to cuba , panama or puerto rico. Or even take back venezuela.
As spain you are limited on what you can do, but the amount of troops USA will have to use to actually stop you will be worth it. Even if just for the amount of time he will need to spend to actually stop you, delaying or making D-Day complicated.
PS: As spain you can also go north and invade Canada. I had some very funny games with my "Spanish truck divisions" taking very important US/Canada cities for weeks.
Its not funny to USA to lose NY State and their 20 + factories for 1-2 months ^^.
It can be devastating on MP Servers where people ignore naval too much or the defense of the islands.
PS: Also remember to place radar + NAV´s for maximum efficiency. Specially if you are a minor like spain where 2-3 extra troops don´t help much in europe.
With italy you can take madagascar on day 1, unless UK have a fleet there or france spend troops on that island its impossible to defend and you can always go for another indian ocean island or even another africa dockyard. You only need 2 troops for each dock you want to actually keep. (1 infra + 2-3 naval forts and its yours forever)
From there you can also try to take some island on the atlantic by "jumping" and make the whole ocean complete available to the axis
.When the axis have acess to the whole ocean. The allies job becomes much more difficulty.
Add a fall of Suez and you have a good chance of making the import of oil from asia close to impossible.
All of that because a italian player spent 2-6 pure infantary troops on some out of the box strategy
.If spain join axis it becomes so easy that i used it everytime i played said country.
With Spain if you join axis you don´t need italy. Spain can easily take Daakar and from there take Saint Helena. That opens the atlantic and South america.
But why stop there? if you take south america. (DOW brazil if needed ) you can jump to cuba , panama or puerto rico. Or even take back venezuela.
As spain you are limited on what you can do, but the amount of troops USA will have to use to actually stop you will be worth it. Even if just for the amount of time he will need to spend to actually stop you, delaying or making D-Day complicated.
PS: As spain you can also go north and invade Canada. I had some very funny games with my "Spanish truck divisions" taking very important US/Canada cities for weeks.
Its not funny to USA to lose NY State and their 20 + factories for 1-2 months ^^.
It can be devastating on MP Servers where people ignore naval too much or the defense of the islands.
PS: Also remember to place radar + NAV´s for maximum efficiency. Specially if you are a minor like spain where 2-3 extra troops don´t help much in europe.
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Obviously. If you give an enemy 3+ years to prepare his defenses, your chance of success is very low. If he had that number at the START of the war, his chances would have gone WAAY up.
A fully developed and escorted convoy system with barely any gaps in its Air support is obviously far more likelyto succeed against the same number of Subs when you compare it to 39 or early 40. Duh.
There is also a way for Japan to strike South america and go for panamá.
Its a 6 month operation and demand 1 BB II + 10 marines. And chance of being detected until you take chile is close to 0.
Basically jump from island to island on the south pacific, all those islands are from UK or France and from there you will have just enough to reach chile after building infra 3 on the last island.
Taking chile + Bolivia will give some nice resources to japan that you can export to germany.
Also from there panama is open to you if you still have a fleet, and retaking venezuela + guiana is pausible scenario too.
Unfortunaly i never pulled it off because i kind stopped playing on patch 1.4. Also its hard to pull this off playing alone. With 2 players its 100% possible.
Its a 6 month operation and demand 1 BB II + 10 marines. And chance of being detected until you take chile is close to 0.
Basically jump from island to island on the south pacific, all those islands are from UK or France and from there you will have just enough to reach chile after building infra 3 on the last island.
Taking chile + Bolivia will give some nice resources to japan that you can export to germany.
Also from there panama is open to you if you still have a fleet, and retaking venezuela + guiana is pausible scenario too.
Unfortunaly i never pulled it off because i kind stopped playing on patch 1.4
. Also its hard to pull this off playing alone. With 2 players its 100% possible.
Numbers do disagree with you, because even by 1943 despite the allies spending many times more effort in producing replacement convoys and escorts compared to German submarine production, for each tonnage of allied merchant ship that was sunk only about 4 tonnages were built.
http://www.usmm.org/images/shipsbuiltsunk.gif
If we make the assumption that 10 times more submarines leads to at least 4 times as much tonnage sunk then suddenly the allies are losing the tonnage war by 1943, not winning it.
If Doenitz had 10 times as many submarines available by 1940 and 1941 when the submarines sunk alot more hips than were being built... well game over for the allies.
Averaged over the entire war the allies actually spent roughly 10 times as much industrial effort as Germany on the battle of the Atlantic ( including research, convoy construction, ships, escorts and airplanes involved ). So even if the Germans lost the battle their submarines still managed to inflict disproportionate losses/costs on their enemies. This also explains clearly why the Germans kept the submarines in the Atlantic and kept developing improved models until the end, because they did more damage there to the allies and tied up more allied resources then most of their other weapons could come close to doing.
Well if you guys like sub warfare.
With italy you can take madagascar on day 1, unless UK have a fleet there or france spend troops on that island its impossible to defend and you can always go for another indian ocean island or even another africa dockyard. You only need 2 troops for each dock you want to actually keep. (1 infra + 2-3 naval forts and its yours forever)
From there you can also try to take some island on the atlantic by "jumping" and make the whole ocean complete available to the axis
When the axis have acess to the whole ocean. The allies job becomes much more difficulty.
Add a fall of Suez and you have a good chance of making the import of oil from asia close to impossible.
All of that because a italian player spent 2-6 pure infantary troops on some out of the box strategy
If spain join axis it becomes so easy that i used it everytime i played said country.
With Spain if you join axis you don´t need italy. Spain can easily take Daakar and from there take Saint Helena. That opens the atlantic and South america.
But why stop there? if you take south america. (DOW brazil if needed ) you can jump to cuba , panama or puerto rico. Or even take back venezuela.
As spain you are limited on what you can do, but the amount of troops USA will have to use to actually stop you will be worth it. Even if just for the amount of time he will need to spend to actually stop you, delaying or making D-Day complicated.
PS: As spain you can also go north and invade Canada. I had some very funny games with my "Spanish truck divisions" taking very important US/Canada cities for weeks.
Its not funny to USA to lose NY State and their 20 + factories for 1-2 months ^^.
It can be devastating on MP Servers where people ignore naval too much or the defense of the islands.
PS: Also remember to place radar + NAV´s for maximum efficiency. Specially if you are a minor like spain where 2-3 extra troops don´t help much in europe.
Interesting stuff, but two questions for you:
1. If I'm playing Germany singleplayer, are their obvious ways to leverage these Italian and Spanish dockyard-conquest gambits?
2. I'm still baffled by the discussion of air assets and radar assets in this thread about subs. Based on my understanding, air assets were used primarily as Anti-Submarine Warfare assets. I've seen reference to this "Scourge of the Atlantic" claim but apparently only 276 of those Condors were ever built, and I've rarely ever seen mention of the role of German recon aircraft at assisting wolf packs.
Further, my understanding is that: wolf packs which operated close to shore, i.e., within range of air recon and air asw were placing themselves increasingly at risk as the war progressed. This was ALWAYS the case to some extent but increasingly so from 1939 onward.
"Radar," so the game has "radar." Not sure if it is represented as being present onboard naval and air vessels though it definitely is represented as a land installation. Radar played many roles in WWII, including giving the American pacific fleet considerable edge in detection and prudent response. With respect to Battle of the Atlantic, and the war in Europe in general, my understanding is that (a) British were far more "advanced" with their use of radar (not that they had "secret technology" that no one else understood per se, but they had concentrated on building a detection and command and control system [both infrastructure, and organizations, and doctrine] which allowed them to use radar to great effect in the Battle of Britain. I was NOT aware of radar playing ANY real role in the Battle of the Atlantic until later in the war (1942-ish?) when various American seaplanes began to have radar installed which would allow them to ping surfaced U-boats from far beyond line of sight, and thus direct ASW directly at the u-boats before they even had a clue they were known. By 1942 the Battle of the Atlantic had already passed its turning point however, so this development just made matters "worse" as far as the strategic value which anti-convoy actions offered to Germany.
In sum, it seems to me that: radar or not should not play a role in the Battle of the Atlantic until the tech/focus is achieved which would have opened up the radar equipped reconnaissance planes; and that is assuming the game models vessel installed radar at all, which I'm not sure if it does.
Air assets should frankly be irrelevant to German sub warfare efforts (that is my understanding), though I could be wrong. Air assets may have been quite helpful to Britain and her allies and later to the U.S. in DETECTING (and to a limited extent interdicting) Axis subs, but the ranges that these covered early on merely set the maximum save distance away from allied airbases that wolf packs needed to maintain: which would have largely placed them beyond the range of their condors too I would think?
I still say: if the game wants to represent historical realities (though obviously not the exact pattern of historical events, which is never possible) then the key to "dominating" in Battle of the Atlantic should be:
1. Pimpup sub tech/national focii early and espeically those which increase buidling speed/capacity.
2. Get Type VIIs asap (probably best to just scrap the Type IIs and regain the manpower and/or any materials that are gained back).
3. Sneak "fleets" of 3 to 6 boats out into the remote parts of the oceans and set them with proper tactics
4. Sink 'em all!
Air assets should only be relevant for operations close to the continents, and thus dependent on Air Superiority having been achieved, and eventually the entire French coast being available. Radar, I question if this should really be relevant directly, though it clearly SHOULD impact how Air Superiority balance plays out.
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