What goes on? My subs wont sink ANYTHING?!

[von_Ysselstein]

Hope someone comes up with an explanation for this: My submarine fleets (four stacks of five sub flottillas) travel around the atlantic whilst beeing set to do convoyraiding mission, and do not ever sink any allied convoys, since war broke out not ONCE (And its 42 now)! I even get messages they have spotted heavyliy escorted convoys in western approaches or elsewhere, but thats it . I checked the british and they have convoys running all around the globe, so why does my subfleet not attack them? (Wolf pack doctrine etc is all researched, overview says raiding efficiency should be 110 percent)

I send some bomber squadrons out to sink convoys, and they succeed! So why dont my subs do what they've been built for? Anyone?

 

[unmerged(42723)]

Not sure but I found that my subs where much more successful earlier in the war and by mid-war they often sunk nothing or at least not much on a mission or were even hunted themselves....looks realistic, dunno if it was designed to work that way or just happened.....bt strange that they haven't sunk more in your case earlier

 

[Gen.Schuermann]

convoys usually travel close to the coasts, so you should either send subs to the Channel or near the coast around Dax (the coast south from Normandy and north of Spain). You should be able to sink a lot there. And try to get more subs in one stack. I guess that your stacks are too small to raid heavily guarded convoys. Just a guess, though.

 

[bubbelties]

The coast of Lisbon is also a good hunting spot.

 

[wright1331]

Hope someone comes up with an explanation for this: My submarine fleets (four stacks of five sub flottillas) travel around the atlantic whilst beeing set to do convoyraiding mission, and do not ever sink any allied convoys, since war broke out not ONCE (And its 42 now)! I even get messages they have spotted heavyliy escorted convoys in western approaches or elsewhere, but thats it . I checked the british and they have convoys running all around the globe, so why does my subfleet not attack them? (Wolf pack doctrine etc is all researched, overview says raiding efficiency should be 110 percent)

I send some bomber squadrons out to sink convoys, and they succeed! So why dont my subs do what they've been built for? Anyone?

basically, subs suck PERIOD

They are not very good at sinking convoys (paradox flaw) and they are now about average with sinking fleet ships (paradox fix)....
Thats why ppl who know the game now switch to a different doctrine. 80 subs are not anywhere close to as good as 4 NB's at sinking convoys (personal experiance) ... now how Messed is that???

 

[Acheron]

I guess subs need to be beefed up cosniderably. Ysseltein, you didn't neglect navald cotrines, right? Some of them can boost subs convoy raiding capabilities by much.

But wright is right here, naval bobmers seem to be far better at convoy raiding. My latest experience, three nav bombers seemed to sink some Japanese shipping off the coast of Tokyo almost every hour!

Another reason to beef done Nav bobmers considerably,. or even redo them completely. That, and the way they wreack havoc on fleets.

 

[Spruce]

Hope someone comes up with an explanation for this: My submarine fleets (four stacks of five sub flottillas) travel around the atlantic whilst beeing set to do convoyraiding mission, and do not ever sink any allied convoys, since war broke out not ONCE (And its 42 now)! I even get messages they have spotted heavyliy escorted convoys in western approaches or elsewhere, but thats it . I checked the british and they have convoys running all around the globe, so why does my subfleet not attack them? (Wolf pack doctrine etc is all researched, overview says raiding efficiency should be 110 percent)

I send some bomber squadrons out to sink convoys, and they succeed! So why dont my subs do what they've been built for? Anyone?

in my game they worked all right - just make smaller groups of 3 so you have more spread. If you find repeated succes in some zones - dispatch extra units.

don't concentrate too much

 

[von_Ysselstein]

Okay, thx for the hints, will try out. Usually in hoi2 my uboats kept crippling british convoys with diabolic efficiency, i sent my subs out to do so in doomsday in the same seazones as they did in hoi2, but maybe convoyshipping drives other routes now. Hopefully there is fat booty along the coastlines *fg, and i will build tons of NB now. But whats really stunning me is that subs will spot a convoy and still wont use their torpedoes

 

[Red Boxer]

Ysselstein:
I was running into a similar problem once, when trying to dislodge the Americans from North Africa. I was grinding their troops down, while I attempted to minimize the amount of supplies coming in through Morocco. I initially sent my subs to work, and ran into those 'heavily guarded convoys.' My subs were quite frightened of them, so I brought in the big guns of my navy, and the AF as well. All I needed to do was take down those escorts and my subs had a field day.

 

[Permanganate]

Germany's best convoy raiding strategy (if you can't invade Britain for some reason, such as a competent MP opponent) is to invade or ally with Spain and base a lot of Nav out of La Coruna. You can hit almost every convoy they have without being in fighter range of the British Isles. There's practically nothing they can do about it.

While you're at it, forget Sealane Interdiction and go for Base Strike with the help of Japanese doctrines. Submarines really aren't very good, and there's no limiting factor preventing you from building up a massive carrier fleet overnight (a real Germany would have had no officers or NCOs with carrier experience, only five shipways capable of building carriers at once, etc) so there's no reason to mess around with what doesn't work.

 

[GeorgeAmbush]

Sucks... OOps, I mean SuBs doesn´t really work in DD. They got sunk way to easy (they seem to forget that they can dive, when a navan bomber passes by) and it´s almost impossible to sink anything but a convoy ship now and then :-/

My adwise: Don´t spend you IC´s on Subs before Paradox (hopefully) fixes this in the 1.2 patch, hopefully out this week.

 

[bizkit]

i think a fleet with 30sub(electro sub) (under command of Dönitz) is ok hunting convoys..once i killed all the convoys of USA at about 1944-1945, i checked so i know.

 

[Spruce]

Sucks... OOps, I mean SuBs doesn´t really work in DD. They got sunk way to easy (they seem to forget that they can dive, when a navan bomber passes by) and it´s almost impossible to sink anything but a convoy ship now and then :-/

My adwise: Don´t spend you IC´s on Subs before Paradox (hopefully) fixes this in the 1.2 patch, hopefully out this week.

subs are not intended to get naval supremacy. For every killer sub stack during naval engagements, there's an equal size of killer destroyer stack with the UK or USA.

Anyhow, if you get the right techs and the right commander you can still sink some capital ships. In my first doomsday 1.1 game my 8 flotilla sub stack sank one CV and one CA from the Royal Navy. Later game my subs sank 2 US CV's which had no more screens after a long battle. So it's an exageration that you can't sink anything except a convoy ship - anyhow subs where meant to sink convoy ships - not to get naval supremacy.

Altough I agree that sub defensiveness might get increased somewhat ... and destroyer sub attack capability increased somewhat. Just to simulate that subs are not that weak to kill during normal naval battles - with the exception of destroyers imho.

 

[unmerged(11633)]

Hope someone comes up with an explanation for this: My submarine fleets (four stacks of five sub flottillas) travel around the atlantic whilst beeing set to do convoyraiding mission, and do not ever sink any allied convoys, since war broke out not ONCE (And its 42 now)! I even get messages they have spotted heavyliy escorted convoys in western approaches or elsewhere, but thats it . I checked the british and they have convoys running all around the globe, so why does my subfleet not attack them? (Wolf pack doctrine etc is all researched, overview says raiding efficiency should be 110 percent)

I send some bomber squadrons out to sink convoys, and they succeed! So why dont my subs do what they've been built for? Anyone?

OK, if you get the message "Heavily escorted convoy spotted" it means that your subs have found convoys, but have chosen not to attack due to there being too many escorts. In this case, you have to increase the size of your sub fleets. Instead of 4 stacks of 5, consider 1 stack of 20. Bombers just attack without worrying about the escorts, so they kill convoys all the time.