U boats pointless?

[Lumpy]

For the first time, I tried to do the U boat thing as Germany. Teched all the way up to Wolf Packs and '40 boats by '39 and spread them out all over the Atlantic before the war. Yet, they sank almost no convoys before getting wrecked by British and French surface fleets in just a few weeks after the war erupted. Quite a bummer, considering the long time it took to research those naval doctrines and pre-teching the '40 U boat in '39. Am I doing something wrong? Do U boats just suck? Halp!

 

[Meglok]

They pretty much suck right now. The 1.2 patch nerfed them so that they stand little chance vs even 1922 tech DDs. The only way to use them is slow speed and constant micro unless you want to spend a lot of NIC replacing them, and even then the losses don't seem to come close to the sinkings.

Add Aluminum in Asia

 

[bERt0r]

Worst of all, you can't even attack the resource convoys shipping aluminium and rubber to the UK, making convoy raiding entirely pointless.

 

[amalric de g.]

As you can see in the picture i use Type IIA and they sunk a lot of ships. U-Boats need aircover, don´t move in the Atlantik.

 

[golruul]

In short, yes, submarines suck. Not worth focusing on.

They can be usefully deployed in areas where you have complete air superiority. So, for example, they can be useful in the North Sea area outside NW Germany as well as Bay of Biscay after you take over France. Other than these two areas, I don't bother because they'll be destroyed quickly.

Also, suiciding one (obsolete, cheapest) sub at a time in the English Channel helps with getting the bombers out so you can shoot them down.

 

[melkor88]

Don't waste your time building U-boats. Focus on building a surface fleet instead, as then you will be able to use it to invade both the UK and the US.

 

[George_VI]

U-boats are generally pretty pointless unless you absolutely spam them. If you want a better way of interrupting allied trade and transport in the Atlantic, what I sometimes do is justify on Denmark for Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and then when you've defeated Denmark take only those three states in the peace conference, since it should keep world tension down. Then build a few heavy cruisers or battlecruisers, and using your new Atlantic islands, you've got bases to support trade interdiction in most of the North Atlantic. Using capital ships to do this also means they can stand a chance of seeing off a British fleet and surviving, since the British tend not to send the Home Fleet, Reserve Fleet or Channel Force that far into the Atlantic. It's pretty gamey but I've found it works well (plus it gives you convenient bases for invading/bombing North America).

 

[Gefallener_Held]

This is really sad and really needs to be fixed, but I am not sure how they can fix it, let alone the broken naval warfare system.

 

[scroggin]

Ironicly submarines are more useful for the Uk than Uboats are for Germany. The Uk can operate their Subs in a seazone that is out of range for any enemy fleets.

 

[LordAkkrand]

Ironicly submarines are more useful for the Uk than Uboats are for Germany. The Uk can operate their Subs in a seazone that is out of range for any enemy fleets.

I've found this also - with the starting subs the UK has, you can cover pretty much every single sea zone that Axis shipping will ever pass through. I've used it in MP games to force Germany to actually stop trading outside of Europe, even when I suspect they were using the trick to keep their lines under attack at 100% efficiency, it didn't matter as they soon hit zero convoys.
Although, to be fair, I ended up switching those groups of 2-3 subs for groups of 1-2 subs, +1 cheap destroyer. They kill the convoys much, much faster, as the destroyer closes range much quicker.
In the end I had groups of BC/LC/3DD covering the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. I've tried that as Germany as well, but you've got to be on the ball when naval combat starts, to decide whether you need to retreat or not.

 

[Alex_brunius]

As you can see in the picture i use Type IIA and they sunk a lot of ships. U-Boats need aircover, don´t move in the Atlantik.

The mixed experience levels ( no higher then regular ) tells me that none of the subs sunk very many ships, and if they did they also took alot of damage in return.

Sinking two obsolete allied starting ships per sub with a fleet of 80+ submarines doesn't really count. Which other ship type would not be able to do a better job with fewer losses if you had 81 of them?


For the dockyard cost of 81 subs (not including the ones you lost), you can afford 4 x lvl 3 Carriers which can do things like this (without any CV losses at all):

 

[Moser]

I found them to be pretty much useless for Germany during 1939-1941 when they were historically quite useful. But then again I didn't have all the doctrines researched.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

Submarines are for surface detection not for fighting.

 

[him_15]

Don't bother with Subs until further tweak and fix from Paradox.

 

[EmperorBatman999]

What about the use of subs outside of Europe like the straits of Molucca? The entire East Indies could be a potentially massive convoy trap if played well by Japan or an independent Axis-aligned Indonesia.

 

[Praetori]

For the dockyard cost of 81 subs (not including the ones you lost), you can afford 4 x lvl 3 Carriers which can do things like this (without any CV losses at all):

View attachment 260543

Against a human opponent non the less.

Do U boats just suck? Halp!

Right now yes. Subs are horribly vulnerable (and will all die to a man to any decently sized destroyer force) and take a very long time to actually sink a convoy, they do keep at it though so if there's no air or SAGs they'll do ok.

Against AI you can find empty sea-zones where the enemy does have convoys but no escorts and in said areas the subs can be cost effective (but on the other hand so could any surface-ship) though I'd call that exploiting bad AI.

Against human opponents they're good for far away harassment if you can find proper basing but that's about it. IC-wise you're better off building SAGs or aircraft at the moment.

Convoy raiding right now is about two things only:
* Killing off convoy ships and thus force the opponent to build more of them (it doesn't really put a dent in production or supplies to lose a convoy, unless you bleed them dry in terms of available ships, then the impact is catastrophic).
* Sinking Army Divisions in transit.

I'm confident it'll be fixed by PDS eventually though.

 

[RisingSun]

Submarines are for surface detection not for fighting.

Well actually the Submarines are for taken out weak or even wounded capitol ships. Mostly for anti shipping.

I would have to say the submarine models isn't good, they need to come up with something more realistic. The surface engagement seem fair, but enemy surface ships can detect and attack the submarines before the subs can do anything.

What I did is increase the sub attack range, same as heavy cruisers or compare to 8" guns. Least they can get ahead shot before the destroyers run in and take em out. Those cruisers shouldn't have sub detection in the first place, hardly any can attack sub. The way they had it, is those depth charges attacking the subs with firing range. They need to be right on top of them for it to work.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

Well actually the Submarines are for taken out weak or even wounded capitol ships. Mostly for anti shipping.

I would have to say the submarine models isn't good, they need to come up with something more realistic. The surface engagement seem fair, but enemy surface ships can detect and attack the submarines before the subs can do anything.

I mean in the game. Don't know what they are for in rl.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Don't know what they are for in rl.

Scouting, Sinking convoys and Sinking badly escorted capital ships, without needing either naval or air supremacy would be their main IRL job.

In HoI4 none of their historical roles work that well to be honest.

 

[RisingSun]

I mean in the game. Don't know what they are for in rl.

Well the Americans use it for anti shipping, while the Japanese use it for warships. They aren't useless, but don't have them in alone or get wasted. If there are no destroyers around, then got nothing to lose.

In my mod, I manage to make the subs more effective and better than they had it.