Effectiveness of subs against DDs in GS 2.00

[DDave]

I got the same experience from the start of the game to 1944. I may not be a very good player, certainly not at naval battles, but the axis player is ruling the Atlantic with his subs in a quite ahistorical way. I got max ASW tech quite fast, but it seems I need max surface ships tech as well to be able to stand a chance. The changes sound good, looking forward to 2.1.

[ferokapo]

I think most of the posts here fall for the misconception that it was actually the destroyer escorts that won the Battle in the Atlantic and sunk most of the German subs.

The majority of German subs was sunk by long-range bombers from land bases and short-range bombers from escort carriers. The Battle in the Atlantic was won by planes, not by destroyers.

The role of the destroyers was rather to prevent the subs from attacking the valuable ships (both merchant marine and capital ships). This is represented by them blocking hexes from which subs could attack.

The problem you report is rather a problem of scale: When half a dozen sub flotillas attack a destroyer flotilla, we actually have a major naval battle going on - it represents close to a hundred subs attacking destroyers!

The Allied strategy should be obvious: Build enough destroyers so that the German subs have no bonus when attacking convoys (representing the normal escorts with the convoy). Build enough strategic bombers to hit subs from land bases (as in real life, this was possible at the start only in some areas, while at the end the whole Atlantic was under Allied air superiority). If you want to invest in anti submarine warfare like the Allies actually did, then you build lots of extra destroyers and carriers, and send them in groups with the convoys, or more importantly, your troup transports later in the war.