The unreasonable effectiveness of submarines

[DGuller]

I was under the impression you could see '40 subs and kill with drop planes + radar + air superiority pretty easily, and once spotted destroyers or NAV can put them down.

Yes, you can. If the AI actually has radar coverage in the sea zone and naval bombers, even '44 subs with snorkel 2 will be ground down fairly efficiently, to the point that I have to withdraw. You can't completely protect the subs with air cover either, because naval bombers slip through often enough to deliver a deadly blow.

I most often run into this problem when taking on the US in WW3, where I just have to stay out of Florida coast with my subs until I take care of the bombers. The way I take care of the bombers is by building destroyers which are basically floating AA batteries, and sending them out to lure the bombers to try to bomb them. Coupled with fighter cover, the naval bombers eventually get all shot down, though it takes a long while. That's one of the few times when I build something other than subs for my navy.

 

[DGuller]

Nothing worthy of praise, I'm sure. You see, the effectiveness of submarines is, basically, an edge-case for Germany: they have designer, default doctrine, proper admirals, even get a focus - everything to make a most-efficient (read: minimal visibility) 1940 subs as soon as possible. That said, even now (since nothing in naval battles was changed for a while) some people playing as Germany still experience their subs being useless - often, because they use subs in shallow waters around England, under heavy enemy air. What do you think UK will achieve with a fleet of subs, lacking dedicated designer and under suboptimal conditions (shallow waters and potential enemy air)?

I disagree about this being an edge case for Germany. Submarine spam is my universal strategy for any country I'm playing, and it's ultimately equally devastating. Even if I'm playing naval countries like Italy or Japan, I switch to all-sub navy just because it's simple, cost-effective, and utterly devastating. The only difference between Germany and other countries is the learning curve; Germany can be deadly from day 1 with this strategy, while other countries have to take it slower at the beginning and maybe start on Aggressive rather than Always Engage, until they get a sea wolf admiral.

 

[Louella]

so subs set to max aggression are extremely effective, and the AI normally doesn't touch the aggression settings. Hmm.

 

[DGuller]

so subs set to max aggression are extremely effective, and the AI normally doesn't touch the aggression settings. Hmm.

It's a combination. You can't just take 1936 bath tubs and set them on max aggression, they'll be dead in no time without accomplishing much of anything. Max aggression just pushes the advantage that stealthy sub with incredibly attack have, and it prevents them from withdrawing from battles that they will actually dominate to a ridiculous degree.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

I disagree about this being an edge case for Germany. Submarine spam is my universal strategy for any country I'm playing, and it's ultimately equally devastating. Even if I'm playing naval countries like Italy or Japan, I switch to all-sub navy just because it's simple, cost-effective, and utterly devastating. The only difference between Germany and other countries is the learning curve; Germany can be deadly from day 1 with this strategy, while other countries have to take it slower at the beginning and maybe start on Aggressive rather than Always Engage, until they get a sea wolf admiral.

If you say so. Any combat tests (ASW DD/CL vs SS) you can point me at, where latter end up being more (or, at least, similarly) IC-efficient?

 

[DGuller]

If you say so. Any combat tests (ASW DD/CL vs SS) you can point me at, where latter end up being more (or, at least, similarly) IC-efficient?

I don't know how to do combat tests, I just play the game. All I can tell you that no matter who I play, if I need a navy, I get all subs and I send anyone in my way to the bottom of the sea, even if I'm Soviet Union and I'm facing the combined might of UK and US. The efficiency doesn't just come from IC, but also from research time. I can ignore most naval techs, I just need to focus on one branch of trade interdiction, a couple of sub techs, and a couple of torpedo techs. Everything else can be ignored until I run out of other things to research.

What I can do is take on a challenge. If you can think of a reasonably powerful country that should absolutely suck at sub warfare, name it, and I'll crush with it any number of naval superpowers using only submarines.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

The historic US and UK navies dealt with submarines by building literally thousands of dedicated vessels for the effort: destroyer escorts, subchasers, corvettes, escort carriers, and so on, for which there are no actual counterparts in-game. You can vaguely simulate escort carriers and destroyer escorts by building the cheapest possible versions of destroyers and carriers to spot and slow the submarines, then producing them in bulk to actually be present to do the spotting. Then also build hunter-killer destroyers with serious ASW weapons, or a bunch of advanced naval bombers to actually sink the spotted submarines.

But these ships cannot be recreated in the game.
In order to represent them, perhaps some techs should allow convoys to do damage to subs?

 

[KubiG37]

In my opinion, the AI is fine the way it is. If you want a truly competitive game, play a multiplayer +20 players game. Singleplayer is mostly for roleplay.

You're right about the competition, of course humans will always ultimately be better (until someone invents Skynet).

But AI is not fine, at least the post-MTG naval AI. It doesn't follow any general strategy (Germany trying to build capital ships, when it has 0 other ships), it doesn't prioritize sectors correctly (USA totally ignoring Japan in Pacific and loosing Hawaii, at least until Axis is dead), doesn't upgrade its designs, doesn't respond to any threats (you can bomb entire UK navy by bombing the English channel, UK will just keep sending its ships through back and forth over time, or the above mentioned 1940 Murderer subs),
... and 100 other problems.

I defeated Japanese navy as Australia with 10 destroyers... I mined 2 sectors around an island Japan invaded, and then sent few of the destroyers on a suicide mission to convoy raid. Japan of course took the bait and always sent its largest fleet to kill them, around 10-20 ships sunk and other severely damaged each time they appoarched my destroyers.
I did it maybe 10 times and they did not have capital ships left. How challenging.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

What I can do is take on a challenge. If you can think of a reasonably powerful country that should absolutely suck at sub warfare, name it, and I'll crush with it any number of naval superpowers using only submarines.

Not, exactly, the point. While I can understand where complaints about Germany come from (you kind of need similar-year ASW tech - which in this case is, usually, ahead-of-time - to provide an adequate counter to sub-spam), everyone else should not pose that much of a problem. I was coming from general balance perspective rather than AI inability to build dedicated ASW ships (or anything dedicated for that matter) in reasonable quantity (which, ideally, should be based on enemy intel). After all, pretty much anything works against AI: last I played Japan long enough, most of US Navy ended up at the bottom of Pacific within a year by 1940 - just to the stock IJN ships and few extra carriers with '36 planes. Didn't even bother with doctrines (except for two, since there's a bonus from focus tree).

 

[MinhowMinhow]

The way to get these results reliably is to do everything to reduce your sub visibility and your torpedo reveal chances. For this particular game, I gave Donitz "Silent Hunter" and then the next two sub promotions, I maxed out the right branch of the trade interdiction, I used the sub naval design company, I researched electric torpedoes, and obviously I used 1940 subs with snorkels. Just stack all the torpedo reveal modifiers, visibility modifiers, and then attack modifiers (the more attack you have, the quicker you dispose of fleets to move on to the next one, as sometimes you can get stuck in a bottle for a couple of months).

Thank You

 

[Gort11]

Can definitely confirm. Here's communist South Africa versus the Allies:

A toe-to-toe fight between fifty destroyers and eleven subs should be over in hours.

 

[Pzt_Kami]

Thank You

View attachment 649629

No way Is this a joke? for god sake did you use cheat or something? it can't be real

 

[Znail]

There are some problems, but the main problem is not that Submarines are too good. A simple fix would be to make the AI flee if facing submarines it can't find instead of staying for weeks until sunk. The problem is that Submarines can get really hard to find and the AI does not upgrade ships so they can't find them. Being outnumbered actually makes it easier for subs to avoid being detected. That should most likely also be changed into another bonus.

 

[Leinad965]

Main problem is unlimited ammo and (not only Paradox) game developers are usually not very good at using percent bonuses (just see "The Spiffing Brit" and his "Perfectly balanced" series on YouTube)

 

[Znail]

Main problem is unlimited ammo and (not only Paradox) game developers are usually not very good at using percent bonuses (just see "The Spiffing Brit" and his "Perfectly balanced" series on YouTube)

You are correct, giving Submarines limited ammo would solve the main issues and it would also be historically accurate. The only problem I see is that it will make Submarines worse at sinking convoys then they should be as Submarines didn't need or use Torpedoes all the time as the standard deck gun on a Sub was quite able to sink an unarmored merchant ship. On the other hand, if we allow the fiction that Submarine ammo will be easily replaced after each combat so wont it restrict Submarines that much in convoy raiding.

 

[Vlad123]

You are correct, giving Submarines limited ammo would solve the main issues and it would also be historically accurate. The only problem I see is that it will make Submarines worse at sinking convoys then they should be as Submarines didn't need or use Torpedoes all the time as the standard deck gun on a Sub was quite able to sink an unarmored merchant ship. On the other hand, if we allow the fiction that Submarine ammo will be easily replaced after each combat so wont it restrict Submarines that much in convoy raiding.

In an uboat simulator-game (I don't remember the name) you could have a total of 4-6 torpedoes. So if you have 10 submarines you can sink 60 ships (assuming one shot one kill) and then you have to retreat because you run out of ammo.

 

[Znail]

In an uboat simulator-game (I don't remember the name) you could have a total of 4-6 torpedoes. So if you have 10 submarines you can sink 60 ships (assuming one shot one kill) and then you have to retreat because you run out of ammo.

The problem is that in the game so will most torpedoes miss so you will need many more torpedoes then kills.

 

[Vlad123]

I know, the example was in case you hit with all torpedoes (and doing one shot one kill) so in that case, you should spam submarines (one match I also had 1000)

 

[squid_hills]

Had a turn as Turkey (no dlc) last night. Built 1940 subs exclusively. Went to war with fascist UK and Italy on December 18th 1943. My death stack of 47 subs engaged a combined UK/Italian naval force in the Red Sea that very day. The battle lasted until January 26 1944. I ended up losing 35 subs in that time, mostly due to the fact that the enemy force numbered 200+ ships, with around 1900 depth charge attacks. I sank an assload of destroyers and convoys, but the bigger ship eluded me. In the end, the game classified it as a defeat, and I'm inclined to agree. Those subs represented 50% of my navy and replacing them will take a while.

But my other death stack of subs, in the Med, (this one supported by radar and air power from bases in Turkey) sank 100+ ships in half the time, with virtually no losses.

 

[DGuller]

I started a game as USSR, and this time just to keep things interesting, I decided to start a war with the Allies just before the Axis attacked me, focusing some of my research and production on the navy (which as USSR I normally ignore completely). I have about 60 1940 subs with snorkels, what's the worst than can happen?

Nothing much, as it turned out, I still controlled the seas, and none of UK, US, Germany, and Italy could do anything to challenge it. I occupied the home island in 1942. Good thing I could research and build a navy on the cheap to handle the Allies, because I still needed to protect myself from the Axis.