Subs and Wolfpacks

[Kayapo]

Submarine warfare is actually something that I thought would change for HOI3.

It seemed pretty certain for me that trying to model submarine warfare the way that HOI2 and HOI3 do (since it is basically the same) won't work well. It is very hard to find a balance between the abstraction needed for convoy raiding duties and direct naval warfare.

The problem I see with how convoy raiding works is that everything is abstracted except the subs. The convoys aren't on the map but the subs are and they shouldn't be. Convoy raiding should have been totally abstracted and in my opinion finding a balance between how subs should operate on convoy raiding and how they operate right now just like if they were normal ships is not possible.

In my opinion the concept used right now totally misses the point that subs are NOT over water(yeah yeah, they spent most of thier time over water but still their whole point was to avoid danger not run towards it). They shouldn't be going against surface fleets like if they were battleships.

 

[whitepatch]

When in the same area as an ememy of several surface ships; a sub could dive, be quiet, and wait for the enemy to leave. It would not put itself in a position where it has to engage a whole fleet.

 

[erekose123]

so you guys are basically saying that all the techs subs i have been researching for the past 4 years are good to go to the trashbin, that if i wanted to raid convoys i had better to build cruisers or battlecruisers, that raiding convoys is just useless anyway, and that i can sit on my dream of seeing one of my sub sink a superheavy BS once in a while ?

bha ... i'm kinda sad now

 

[unmerged(151781)]

well, one solution might be to make a new tab for convoy raiding, just like there is one for convoys.

By adding subs to the tab you can set up missions for them, or a specific country to block, or a special naval zone. This might be the solution to the sub problem cause then it wouldnt have to have the problem with naval warfare vs convoy raiding efficiency.

because convoys have escorts, but this is all invisible on the map, and the subs are not, and this has always puzzled me. Better to have things that interact in the same way.

Hope this will be solved in future patches, cause sub-warfare and all other strategic warfare of WW2 is important for the game, and brings a new level to the game, as it will not be the standard "move-kill-move-kill-stop" tactics for all units

 

[Sirveri]

so you guys are basically saying that all the techs subs i have been researching for the past 4 years are good to go to the trashbin, that if i wanted to raid convoys i had better to build cruisers or battlecruisers, that raiding convoys is just useless anyway, and that i can sit on my dream of seeing one of my sub sink a superheavy BS once in a while ?

bha ... i'm kinda sad now

A group of six 1940 tech era subs can and will horribly brutalise an enemy fleet that is weak in the ASW department. So no, your dreams aren't worthless.

 

[unmerged(148761)]

As I see it, the biggest advantage a WWII era submarine has is that it can choose when to engage the enemy and when not to. When a U-boat sights a large royal navy battle force, it can submerge and move away. In the current game set up, even on a "passive stance" a group of submarines set to convoy raiding will inevitably end up engaged with a giant fleet and will get torn up. I tend to agree that, if convoys are "off the map", submarines should be too.

 

[unmerged(137678)]

The resources need to be changed too. One of the major strategic weaknesses of Britain and Japan was their reliance on imported food (50% and 20% respectively). While the u-boats sank a lot of war material the most significant impact they had was on food supply in the UK. The consensus is that if the u-boats had sunk 1 more ship each in '41, there would have been famine and the English would have surrendered. That calculation alone kept Churchill up at night. Same situation in Japan, but they had tighter social controls and people were accustomed to lower calorie levels to start with.

Outside of convoy raiding, the major contributions of submarines was their ability to pick off carriers. Look at the number of fleet carriers lost to aircraft vs the number lost to submarines. The sinking of the Courageous in September '39 and the near miss on the Ark Royal led the Royal Navy to withdraw all carriers from anti sub duty until late in the war.

For what it is worth, surface raiders were mostly ineffective during the war. Too easy to detect and chase, mostly. Even the US sank few merchant ships by surface action.

 

[AlanC9]

so you guys are basically saying that all the techs subs i have been researching for the past 4 years are good to go to the trashbin, that if i wanted to raid convoys i had better to build cruisers or battlecruisers, that raiding convoys is just useless anyway, and that i can sit on my dream of seeing one of my sub sink a superheavy BS once in a while ?

bha ... i'm kinda sad now

Actually, convoy raiding with battlecruisers is worthless too.

 

[unmerged(11375)]

10 CONVs cost 80 IC days. ONE sub costs 1080 IC days... That alone makes SUBs a luxury no one wants to hamper his game with.

Since CONVs can be replaced so cheap and easy, the aspect of strategic warfare via SUBs has been made impossible, too.

To make SUBs useful at all and to not lose them at first enemy contact, one has to heavily invest in many techs (the doctrines, too!).

After all, they have become rubbish in the current state of the game. Just like CAS they have no sense and can be deleted from tech and prduction list if not being seriously rebalanced in the next patch. Admittedly i am disappointed that these fine machines of ww2 have no justification of existence - and this after two patches!

Huh, I just went into the files and made them cheaper to faster to build..... Ta Daaaaaa....

 

[Federkiel]

Yes, everyone could do that. But maybe the problem are not the SUBs cost (although is is possible, yes) but the CONVs cheap cost and especially the extremely short building time.

However, i do not claim to know how they should be balanced. Game developers with their testers attached ought to do that and i trust in PI's good record to rebalance things accordingly.

If everyone has to do it on his own, the regular customer doesn't get a sound build and also we cannot compare results of strategies and such...

 

[unmerged(61401)]

Sidenote: I don't know the effects of the convoy/uboot IC/day ratio against a human opponent, but against an AI Britain, the U-boot waffe is/was very devastating in 1.1 (if only their unity would decrease too).

Against raiding abstraction.

 

[General War]

As we all know, the main advantage of the sub is to dive and become almost invisible. The chance that a destroyer detects a sub on surface is minimal, because sub will spot a destroyer much sooner and dive.

Once dived, a sub can be detected with passive and active sonar. At the begining of the war, British sonar technology was not that good. I'm not sure of the starting level of ASW in game, but it should be minimal.

To avoid detection by sonar, subs dived deeper. And German subs, except for coastal Type II, could go very deep. While the American subs could go 100-150m, German could dive to 300-400m. Therefore Germany should start with an advanced Submarine hull technology. The hull level should decrease the destroyer's ability to detect a sub. This is not the case at the moment.
Also, Germany should start with a high level of submarine warfare doctrines, especialy in later scenarios. I've never played Germany, so maybe it is already so.

The main enemy of submarine was radar equipped aircraft, which turned the tide in Battle for Atlantic in mid 1943, along with the improved destroyer's sonar. The impact of radar was so strong that the subs had to change tactics - instead of going submerged by day and charging batteries at night, subs started to sail submerged at night and surfaced by day, in hope they'll spot the aircraft before it spots them. Most of the time it didn't work. The invention of snorkel gave the subs some breathing space. All of this should be reflected in game.

Late in the war, radar could detect sub's periscope and snorkel. Therefore, a high level of Small ship's radar should be able to detect a sub.

IIRC, submarine's AA weapon and torpedoes are not upgradable. It doesn't make any sense and should be changed.

Building of subs should be slightly cheaper and faster. Convoys should be slightly more expensive and slower to build, with maybe adding a "Liberty ship technology" to make it faster. Perhaps there should be more ships in convoys. Also, the "Escorts" (built from the Production tab, not from Flotilla), should improve over time with with research.

Cruisers should not be able to detect or attack the sub!

 

[whitepatch]

As I see it, the biggest advantage a WWII era submarine has is that it can choose when to engage the enemy and when not to. When a U-boat sights a large royal navy battle force, it can submerge and move away. In the current game set up, even on a "passive stance" a group of submarines set to convoy raiding will inevitably end up engaged with a giant fleet and will get torn up. I tend to agree that, if convoys are "off the map", submarines should be too.

Well sometimes the choice of battle wasn't up to the submarine. But think of how small a sub is and how big a surface ship or a fleet of them is. A submarine could easily spot an approaching group of enemy ships and take the steps needed to avoid detection. An airplane had a better chance of spotting a submarine since they could get closer before being detected. This was of course until the invention of radar; which made the submarine an easier target to spot. The Germans countered this by using a snorkel device that let the submarine use its diesels while staying submerged.

With this in mind it boggles my mind when I see my submarines fighting a 30 ship enemy fleet. The ocean is a very big place, this should not be happening. I don't have the statistics but I would bet good money on the fact that U-boats were sunk more often by airplanes and convoy escorts than battleships.

 

[heteaho]

The whole submarine warfare in all the Hoi games so far has been fundamentally broken.

Facts are that subs would have been the masters of the ocean if the war had continued longer. Surface ships / planes had no effective answers to subs that never surface above periscope depth (they still dont)

Its ridiculous how underpowered subs are in Hoi1/2/3 if you really concentrate research on them as a priority.

 

[krieger11b]

Subs are way more efficient per IC than any other warship when it comes to fighting other warships. Lump them up in groups of 12 or so and watch the enemy sink to the bottom. A group of 30 is absolutely deadly. Especially with techs. If 300 type IX submarines all fired about the same time with all four forward tubes that would be 1200 torpedoes in the water, and that is just the first salvo, any ship would be lucky to survive that gauntlet. Plus what other warship can hit a carrier?

Before anyone cries unhistorical, what do you think would happen to a fleet of CVs, BBs and escorts if they ran into a wolfpack of 100 submarines? It wouldn't be pretty, just because they were not used much in concentration against enemy surface fleets doesn't mean they wouldn't do a good job, the only time I knew they did this was against a particularly troublesome carrier, the carrier was sunk, though one of the best U-Boot aces was killed also.

 

[herm]

IIRC, submarine's AA weapon and torpedoes are not upgradable. It doesn't make any sense and should be changed.

They can be.

 

[General War]

They can be.

I'm afraid they can't. Sure you can research torpedoes, and build a new class of sub with the improved ones, but the old classes are stuck with the torpedoes that were available when a sub was built. Which doesn't make any sense from the historic point of view. Once a new torpedo was developed, all subs were equipped with them. The same is true for AA weapons.

Speaking of torpedoes, it is strange that Electric torpedo technology, placed under the Secret tab, is classified as 1945 tech, with relatively high prerequisites. Electric T2 torpedo was used by the Germans since the beginning of war.

 

[herm]

I'm afraid they can't. Sure you can research torpedoes, and build a new class of sub with the improved ones, but the old classes are stuck with the torpedoes that were available when a sub was built. Which doesn't make any sense from the historic point of view. Once a new torpedo was developed, all subs were equipped with them. The same is true for AA weapons.

Speaking of torpedoes, it is strange that Electric torpedo technology, placed under the Secret tab, is classified as 1945 tech, with relatively high prerequisites. Electric T2 torpedo was used by the Germans since the beginning of war.

Ah, you meant the existing subs cant be upgraded. My bad.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Its correct that sub AA can't upgrade:

submarine_antiaircraft = {
...
	can_upgrade = no

I also agree that Torpedoes should be upgradeable. Even if the tubes & firing/targeting mechanisms are included in this tech those could in most cases also be upgraded.

 

[General War]

Ah, you meant the existing subs cant be upgraded. My bad.

My bad for not making myself more clear in my first post.

Its correct that sub AA can't upgrade:

submarine_antiaircraft = {
...
	can_upgrade = no

I also agree that Torpedoes should be upgradeable. Even if the tubes & firing/targeting mechanisms are included in this tech those could in most cases also be upgraded.

Upgrading the torpedoes should be as simple as sticking a new torpedo into the existing tube. They were all of the same diameter, 533mm, with compatible mechanisms. I'm not 100% sure for the latter though.

It's more complicated for the AA guns, because usualy the coning tower needed to be modified. But if the other ships are able to upgrade AA guns, so should the subs. Anyway, the best defense against aircraft was to crash dive.