U-boats hunting down DD's

[Diplomaticus]

Thanks for everyone's input. It's late 1941 and I'm still struggling against the subs (yes I am investing heavily in ASW, and I'm pretty sure the subs are no higher tech level than the destroyers).

If I escort a convoy, it's feeding frenzy time with (usually) five subs attacking the corner of my formation. The turn before last I sent out a donut of six destroyers and he still sunk one - sure he took damage, but no subs were sunk.

I still think it's badly wrong that the game encourages a player to attack the destoyers and not the convoys. The way I see it, if there's a convoy with a single escort you should need to have a very good reson to attack the one that's bristling with guns and depth charges. Anyway, I have a couple of suggestions - I've no idea how paractical they are. And I've no idea how things pan out later in the war.

1) halve the cost of destroyers but also halve their SURFACE attack strength, leaving their ASW the same (hence making them a much less economically viable target) or,

2) give subs a minus on their attack strength against destroyers (leave it the same against everything else)

Just my two cents,
Skipio

I copied this from a thread in the General Discussion.

I think this issue needs to be taken very seriously as we work on the final tweaks for the latest version of GS. Moriss is in the process of exploring the sub blob strategy. I see nothing wrong with this--I don't think it's necessarily even an 'exploit'--so long as we fix the problem of DD vulnerability to sub attacks.

Honestly, don't we all have to agree that wolfpacks systematically hunting down DD flotillas is completely ahistorical? It was the other way around, for heaven's sake!

Yes, the subs did hunt down and sink every other thing afloat. Subs sank the carrier Ark Royal, for instance. And I'm sure that *some* destroyers were sunk by subs. But there's something seriously wrong with the game when, ask Skipio writes above, he's afraid to send out his DD's on escort duty because they'll get gang-raped by u-boats. That's simply not the way things happened in WWII.

In the thread referred to above, Stauffenberg suggested moving out in groups of DD's with a CV in the middle, but against the tactics currently being used by German u-boats, this isn't much of a solution, at least not in the first years of the war. Unless the UK sends out a DD blob with the CV in the middle (and in that case, the rest of the ocean must be left undefended), the subs can just move in, take out the CV, and take their licks from the couple of DD escorts. Not a winning solution.

[pk867]

Hi,

I believe with the changes with slower ASW upgrades has caused this before you would gain 2 ASW every other level. Of course I can be wrong. In the current situation the ASW is attained 1 point every level instead.

Then add into the change of the Naval garrison rule which can affect the sub naval attack and the level of convoy PP's.

I have had games in the past before these changes where the Atlantic had 12 to 18 U-Boats which was frightful. The Allies could not attempt anything until late 43'

[Kragdob]

After doing some tests myself I must agree. Uboats can sing Allied DDs quite fast if they concentrate on one target.

Maybe DDs should have survivability increased when fighting with submarines?

[zechi]

From my point of view the current system works quite well. To have good chances to finish off a 10 step DD you will need four SUBs (with about equal techs). Only with luck three SUB attacks will be enough and if you get unlucky you will even need five SUB attacks. At least the first two SUB attacks will result in quite significant damage on the SUBs.

Nevertheless, Diplomaticus has perhaps a point concerning the historical reality. I don't really know if SUBs attacked Destroyers regulary or not. However, I guess that if the SUBs had an opportunity they would also attack destroyers.

To make things more interesting in the Atlantic, it could be perhaps feasible to allow Destroyers to move and then attack a SUB which is visible at the start of the turn. However, this would make it most likely to easily to hunt SUBs down.

[richardsd]

It has aways been possibe to pick on DD's with sub's.

That hasn't changed much, what has changed is the general benefit of removing DD's. It used to be that you attacked DD's only if you had a strategy that required it, now you get the benefit of reduced convoy size for the allies.

I am still not sure that its broken, except that maybe DD's might be a little expensive.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The DD price is reduced to 50 as well. So both subs and DD's now cost 50 PP's.

DD's can outrun subs when they're depleted so you can get them to safety and be able to repair then unless the subs finish off the DD's. What you need to do is to sail your units in escort groups so you can always retaliate against subs with undamaged units including CV's.

With some ASW tech you will do a lot of damage on the subs so the subs will soon stop going after DD's. The DD's will also get better survivability. Early in the war you might consider sending your escorts to port if the subs become too much of a nuisance.

I think this works quite well and you need to focus on building more naval labs for UK and USA to get the necessary ASW tech. If you ignore naval labs as Morris did then you will lose your navy.

So I don't think we need to change anything here. The Allied player just needs to alter his strategy a bit. For most of 1940 you will only face 3 subs and they will rarely sink a DD.

What you can't do is to send the DD's as lone escorts. You have to form escort groups similar to the sub wolfpacks.

[Kragdob]

The DD price is reduced to 50 as well. So both subs and DD's now cost 50 PP's.

DD's can outrun subs when they're depleted so you can get them to safety and be able to repair then unless the subs finish off the DD's. What you need to do is to sail your units in escort groups so you can always retaliate against subs with undamaged units including CV's.

With some ASW tech you will do a lot of damage on the subs so the subs will soon stop going after DD's. The DD's will also get better survivability. Early in the war you might consider sending your escorts to port if the subs become too much of a nuisance.

I think this works quite well and you need to focus on building more naval labs for UK and USA to get the necessary ASW tech. If you ignore naval labs as Morris did then you will lose your navy.

So I don't think we need to change anything here. The Allied player just needs to alter his strategy a bit. For most of 1940 you will only face 3 subs and they will rarely sink a DD.

What you can't do is to send the DD's as lone escorts. You have to form escort groups similar to the sub wolfpacks.

I do not ignore naval tech (maxed out from the beginning) but subs are more deadly then DD at the beginning of the game. The problem is that if they sink 1 or 2 British DDs it is not easy for UK to replace them if UK is pushed elsewhere as well. So with good Axis strategy you can have no DD on Atlantic by 1940 and you do not need to invest in subs to have that.

Yes that creates 'golden time' for Axis uboats as was in history yet I tend to agree that DD hunting is ahistorical. I'd prefere to have 2 DDs (not four) that do not fear meeting with uboats than twice as much that I'm afraid to get out of the port (in order to loose transport escort requirement).

So maybe 2 DDs at start (you are able to protect somehow 1 out of 3 convoys) but more resistant to uboat attacks?

[Diplomaticus]

DD's can outrun subs when they're depleted so you can get them to safety and be able to repair then unless the subs finish off the DD's. What you need to do is to sail your units in escort groups so you can always retaliate against subs with undamaged units including CV's.

With respect, I disagree. Based on what we're seeing in AAR's this won't work very reliably because the u-boat strategy is to attack the "corners" of naval formations. For example, if you have 3 DD's spaced evenly around a convoy they're escorting, that means 3 uboats can attack any one of those DD's without any reprisal possible (except from the DD being attacked, but obviously it will be in no shape to fight back). The only way around this is to have a blob of six DD's in a hexagon group. In this case the 'corner' DD can still be attacked by 3 subs, but then 2 DD's would be in position to counter-attack. My problem with this is that it's completely unrealistic to have a game where the only way to keep your DD's afloat is to have them move in formations of 6! If we add CV's to the formula, it doesn't really help much. A CV escorted by only 2-3 DD's is very vulnerable to being sunk by a wolfpack. Yes, the DD's would then get to counter-attack, but the loss of the CV would make it a tradeoff that the Axis would take gladly. A CV could be escorted by a blob of 6 DD's and be nice and safe... but then where's the convoy they're supposed to be escorting?

What we're seeing in the AAR's is a systematic policy of hunting down and eliminating DD's. The game puts the Allies in an impossible bind: either they escort the convoys and see their destroyers sunk, or they stay in port and the subs gain a huge advantage from the lack of escorts.

I think what we want to see happening is something closer to the actual reality: In the early years of the war, the Allies do, in fact, send out their destroyers to escort convoys, but their initially primitive ASW effectiveness and simply having too few DD's to cover everywhere mean that the u-boats have a field day; not by sinking the escorts but by sinking the convoys! Eventually, with dedicated research on sonar, air recon, and improved ASW weapons, the Allies turn the tide....

I think we can get closer to this model simply by making DD's just a little harder to sink from sub attacks. That's all it would take. I'm not a programmer, so maybe this is too hard a change to make. We want DD's to be more resistant to sub attack, but not to attacks by BB's, planes, etc. Is this change un-doable?

[richardsd]

You shouldn't be out escorting convoys with a couple of DD's early in the war.

There is a reason the wolfpacks called it the 'happy time'.

I think you have to understand that early on the Subs are in the ascendancy - as was the case in reality.

When did the escorted convoy system start? it certainly wasn't early in the war.

[peterjfrigate]

Uboat.net has the data you want -- you can search for things like the numbers of a certain type sunk by Axis u-boats. But somebody more knowledgable than me should take the job (e.g. there's a lot of vessel designations that aren't part of the game).

[gerones]

I think the problem here could be not how relatively easy is for the subs to sink a lonely DD but how could affect to game balance the italians building submarine fleets of 8-10 subs units now that they are cheaper.

[gerones]

I would add a build limit for the italian fleet so they can only build a maximum of sub units. This limit would be based in the industrial capacity that this country had in the real war for building such submarine fleet. I would set this limit in 6 sub units which seems to be way enough.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

In GS you need escort groups of at least 6-7 naval units to form a blob around the central CV, transport or convoy. If you place 3 escorts only then you're asking for having the escorts attacked instead. It's been like this since the first CeaW version.

I think that either you escort the convoys with proper force or you don't escort at all. At the beginning of the game you can send all your Allied naval units together to once task force and use it for escort duty like getting the Canadian units to Europe or Egypt. I even use the French naval units I can spare to do this. To help as much as you can you can send British naval units to the western Med to keep the naval presence there to keep Italy out of the war. Then you use French naval units as escorts. That means fewer British naval units exposed to sub attacks.

If you build a UK naval lab soon and put focus in ASW and then get the second lab asap then you should get ASW tech 1 and beyond quite fast.

Yes, the escorts are quite vulnerable initially, but you can do something about it. Later in the war a single DD can inflict 6-7 steps per attack on a sub. So the DD's will become really nasty. You just have to make sure you don't squander your naval force until they can retaliate hard against the subs.

The changed rules in GS v2.01.35 means the Allies can't ignore putting effort into the navy. Your first priority should be to win the battle of the Atlantic.

[rkr1958]

1. The problem I'm having with this discussion is that we're talking in generalities based on anecdotal data. Do we have an issue? I really don't know either way. I'm on the fence. What I don't what to do is make a tweak based on anecdotal data only to find that we made it too difficult for subs.

2. Does anyone have any hard data that we could judge this on? If so, what remedy does that data suggest. If not, is there anyone who thinks this is an issue willing to run some hotseat tests to build a data set to support or refute their hypothesis?

3. We are getting very close to release. I hate making a big change without first having the proper time to test it. However; I hate releasing GS with a potential flaw.

[Blathergut]

I don't think there is a problem with the subs per se. The problem that has always existed, if it is even a problem, is that players are free to build how they will. If one player builds a sub blob or other blob, the opposing player can be overwhelmed in a certain area of the game. This can happen in North Africa as well as in the Atlantic. But short of being able to set an option at game start to limit builds (and many don't like that), the interesting challenge in this game is to be able to not succumb to said blob/attack. If the Allied player risks DDs early on and loses them, then so be it. Deserved. I like that the subs can be deadly. If they were weaker, there would be less challenge to the Battle for the Atlantic portion of this game. I would vote to limit Italian sub builds as hordes of them seem definitely out of place.

[richardsd]

I don't think we have the data to say there is a flaw.

[gerones]

Regarding subs we could do the following. As we all know Germany focussed much more than other countries in submarines production. This should be reflected in some way in the game. So I would propose the following limits by country:

Germany: 12 subs units
Italy: 6 subs units
USA: 6 subs units
UK: 6 subs units
USSR: 6 sub units

That is to say that the sub limit production will be 6 units for all countries with the exception of Germany that could build a maximum of 12 subs units. The same way we have different paratroops limits depending on country and year (based historically) we could do the same regarding subs.

I really see balance issues with italian submarine fleets of 10-12 subs units which is perfectly possible to build by 1942. If we add to this that sub tech level has less difficulty to increase than others, we can see huge and highly upgraded (high survivability values) italian submarine fleets that can be really tough. I am not have the chance to test this in a hotseat game (I will be out of town for some weeks) but I would invite to any of you to test this.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I'm against absolute limits regarding unit builds and I think the limits you propose will be higher than most Axis players will ever build. I've never seem a game where Italy has 10-12 subs. I've never seen Germany with 12+ subs as well. Those units will burn oil and can be bombarded by strategic bombers. If Italy only builds subs then it means they can't have many land units or labs.

The DD survivability is at the game start only 1 less than the BB survivability. So if we increase it then they will become too powerful compared to BB's. Granted, BB's gain more survivability with tech.

Maybe we could look at a different approach about rewarding forming naval task forces. We could add the following rules. Naval task force.

1. Subs will get +1 survivability if attacking or defending while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly subs
2. BB's and DD's will get +1 survivability if attacking while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly surface ships (BB, CV or DD)
3. BB's, CV's, DD's and transports if defending will get +1 survivability while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly surface ships

Attacks made by air units and CV are not affected. Neither are attacks against convoys.

By doing this you reward players for forming task forces where the naval units are adjacent to one another. This can help somewhat against subs targeting DD's instead of convoys.

Attacking subs will more rarely get the survivability benefit since they have to move from their friendly other subs to get to the target area.

Air and attacking CV's can fly directly to their targets bypassing a screen so being in a task force won't help as much. Therefore you don't get a survivability bonus against such units.

What do you think about such a rule?

[KingHunter3059]

I'm against absolute limits regarding unit builds and I think the limits you propose will be higher than most Axis players will ever build. I've never seem a game where Italy has 10-12 subs. I've never seen Germany with 12+ subs as well. Those units will burn oil and can be bombarded by strategic bombers. If Italy only builds subs then it means they can't have many land units or labs.

The DD survivability is at the game start only 1 less than the BB survivability. So if we increase it then they will become too powerful compared to BB's. Granted, BB's gain more survivability with tech.

Maybe we could look at a different approach about rewarding forming naval task forces. We could add the following rules. Naval task force.

1. Subs will get +1 survivability if attacking or defending while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly subs
2. BB's and DD's will get +1 survivability if attacking while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly surface ships (BB, CV or DD)
3. BB's, CV's, DD's and transports if defending will get +1 survivability while being adjacent to 2 or more friendly surface ships

Attacks made by air units and CV are not affected. Neither are attacks against convoys.

By doing this you reward players for forming task forces where the naval units are adjacent to one another. This can help somewhat against subs targeting DD's instead of convoys.

Attacking subs will more rarely get the survivability benefit since they have to move from their friendly other subs to get to the target area.

Air and attacking CV's can fly directly to their targets bypassing a screen so being in a task force won't help as much. Therefore you don't get a survivability bonus against such units.

What do you think about such a rule?

Sounds good!

J.

[Diplomaticus]

I know that I've been one of the loudest grousers about the DD's-getting-sunk-by-subs thing, but I've been listening to what folks have been saying in the forums about our approaching deadline, and I doubt that it would be wise at this late date to introduce changes that might have unanticipated consequences. Maybe it's best to let it be.

While I still hate the idea of DD's having to hide in port from the Big Bad Uboats, in an abstract sense maybe it accurately reflects the early war situation where the uboats ran amok. If the Allies are prudent, in due order they'll be able to win the Battle of the Atlantic.