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Post by jeb94 on Sept 1, 2018 0:36:21 GMT -6
I do like subs and I hope the game does take into account their effectiveness along with the continuing battle to counter them. At the same time I hope it doesn't become overwhelming to manage. I'm glad the scope of the game is from 1900 to 1950. Its roughly the last five years of this period where the submarine finally started becoming a submarine rather than a submersible. After this time the submarine really took off and, despite CVs and the ships that escort them, became the true rulers of the seas. Today there are only two kinds of vessels at sea. Submarines and targets.
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Post by wolfpack on Sept 13, 2018 23:29:06 GMT -6
1 bismarck class at full load is ~51,000 tons rounding up 1 XXI type u-boat 1,621 tons so 51,000/1650 rounding up ~31 type XXI’s per bismarck class so 62 for both his is pure material weight though and not cost or actual material so it coud be as many as 70 or as few as 50 might do the math for type VII or type XI later for giggles, Now to kill this topic off like a bad anime character. the type XI is a pretty baller submarine wasn’t a war winner like the gato-trench series but it had range and didnt break the bank even had two aft tubes for cheeky shots had rather impressive aaa too with the dual 3.7cm or a quad 20mm after 1944 it and its ww1 predecessor the U-151 u-cruiser” type converted merchant submarines (pretty cool boats in themselves they had two deck guns to fight with on the surface) really dont get enough mention in popular culture
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Post by aeson on Sept 14, 2018 12:12:21 GMT -6
the type XI is a pretty baller submarine wasn’t a war winner like the gato-tench series but it had range and didnt break the bank even had two aft tubes for cheeky shots had rather impressive aaa too with the dual 3.7cm or a quad 20mm after 1944 it and its ww1 predecessor the U-151 u-cruiser” type converted merchant submarines (pretty cool boats in themselves they had two deck guns to fight with on the surface) really dont get enough mention in popular culture Do you mean the Type IX, or perhaps the Type VIICs which were experimentally equipped as AA escorts? The Type XIs were never actually completed, as far as I am aware.
Anyways, shooting it out with aircraft is a bad idea for a submarine. It was successful for the month or two that it took the various air forces to realize what was happening, adapt their tactics, and deploy weapons designed to make it too dangerous for a submarine to try fighting it out with aircraft on the surface, and after that it became a worse idea than submerging and attempting to break contact and slip away. Worse from the submarine's perspective, aircraft almost always have friends nearby - other aircraft that can show up within no more than an hour or two in numbers capable of trivially overwhelming a submarine's AA defenses and surface combatants that might take a little longer to arrive but easily outclass a surfaced submarine and can kill submerged submarines if they can find them.
Individual aircraft are high-threat low-value targets; fighting them with a relatively vulnerable high-value asset like a submarine which by design has at best a very limited ability to engage them and can be crippled by relatively minor damage is wrong-headed, especially within easy reach of powerful ASW forces or far from a safe haven into which a cripple could retreat. A submarine's best defense is and always has been its ability to evade detection and, if found, to break contact and slip away before it can be crippled or sunk.
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Post by wolfpack on Sept 14, 2018 18:37:54 GMT -6
The type ix sorry for the mix up i should have caught that, yeah shooting at an attacking plane any more heavily armed than an early war spitfire but still the better the aaa the better chance a boat forced to remain on the surface has to make it to port
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Post by ccip on Sept 17, 2018 20:01:41 GMT -6
My 2 cents is that I'm totally happy with how submarines themselves work in RTW, post the revisions they received mid-way through the RTW 1 update cycle. 1950 is a great cut-off point, because that's right before true nuclear and ballistic subs showed up, and everything before it still essentially fits the existing formula. The only thing that may be worth looking into is how to factor in the fleet submarine and wolfpack doctrines - but even that seems more like something to work into commerce raiding chances, and pre-battle scouting and unit positioning. Love subs though I might, there's absolutely no reason to treat them as capital ships or put them under direct fleet control in battles - not even the pre-war US fleet sub doctrine would justify that.
What I'm a lot more interested in is how the interaction between subs and aircraft will go. That is an insanely complicated match-up, even if ASW happens totally outside player control! There's a clear winner in that match-up (in pre-1950s technology anyway), but it's a complex and politically/economically tricky balance. I'm excited for it, because it makes it possible to decisively win at ASW in a way that you can't really do with the pre-1925 tech. But it definitely shouldn't be too easy!
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Post by alexbrunius on Sept 23, 2018 12:48:34 GMT -6
The estimate is that two type XXI U-boats cost the German's 5000 tanks and that could have saved the Eastern Front. I think the German's placed too much faith in technology and forgot the famous saying that "God fights on the side of the bigger battalions". I don't believe the German's had sufficient time and resources to properly test out the Type XXI U-boat. They might have been able to perfect it more if they had. They might be a lesson for war gaming. I found some cost numbers for the sub and contemporary German tanks for you. Price of type XXI uboat: ~4,600,000 Reichsmark Price of Tiger II tank: ~800,000 Reichsmark ( 6 tanks for each sub ) Price of Panther tank: 176,100 Reichsmark ( 26 tanks for each sub ) What kind of tank did you compare with? A toy tank?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 23, 2018 13:12:05 GMT -6
The estimate is that two type XXI U-boats cost the German's 5000 tanks and that could have saved the Eastern Front. I think the German's placed too much faith in technology and forgot the famous saying that "God fights on the side of the bigger battalions". I don't believe the German's had sufficient time and resources to properly test out the Type XXI U-boat. They might have been able to perfect it more if they had. They might be a lesson for war gaming. I found some cost numbers for the sub and contemporary German tanks for you. Price of type XXI uboat: ~4,600,000 Reichsmark Price of Tiger II tank: ~800,000 Reichsmark ( 6 tanks for each sub ) Price of Panther tank: 176,100 Reichsmark ( 26 tanks for each sub ) What kind of tank did you compare with? A toy tank? I think the idea was that there was a better use for the money, no matter how many tanks etc. could have been built. That is my take on the whole issue.
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miv79
New Member
Posts: 8
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Post by miv79 on Sept 24, 2018 9:30:14 GMT -6
alexbrunius can a source? thank you in advance.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 24, 2018 10:09:36 GMT -6
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Post by danelin on Sept 26, 2018 12:58:09 GMT -6
I agree that the resources could have gone to better uses, but one thing i think your forgetting about the material used in the Type XXI's vrs tanks, did they even have the production lines and ability to use those resources for increased production. There is also the point of late war they didn't have the fuel to run those tanks in the field.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 26, 2018 13:28:02 GMT -6
I agree that the resources could have gone to better uses, but one thing i think your forgetting about the material used in the Type XXI's vrs tanks, did they even have the production lines and ability to use those resources for increased production. There is also the point of late war they didn't have the fuel to run those tanks in the field. Well, they did have synthetic fuel to use but that was expensive. If they had had more tanks, they might have succeeded in capturing and using the Caucasian Fields. They also had the Romanian oil fields until about April 1944. So the answer is, maybe. Had they been able to execute their Barbarossa properly and take Moscow, they then could have gone after the Caucasus with worrying about the rear at Moscow. Another virtual historical possibility.
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Post by alexbrunius on Oct 1, 2018 5:23:58 GMT -6
I think the idea was that there was a better use for the money, no matter how many tanks etc. could have been built. That is my take on the whole issue. I disagree strongly about this. There are few German weapons and investments that proved as effective as their submarines did. According to this study below the submarine menace forced the allies to spend 9.6 times as much as Germany did on the battle of the Atlantic ( even if it ignores the cost of allied warships sunk by German subs ): web.archive.org/web/20080409052122/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.htmlThis basically meant that had Germany not invested into submarines then for each tank that the Germans can afford to build extra due to not fighting in the Atlantic the Allies can instead afford to build 9.6 equivalent tanks ( or a whole lot more cheaper Sherman tanks ), and land them in France in 1942 or 1943 instead of 1944 as Historical. Germany was much better of trying to sink the Sherman tanks on convoys crossing the Atlantic then fighting them on the ground.
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Post by jeb94 on Oct 3, 2018 22:06:35 GMT -6
I think the idea was that there was a better use for the money, no matter how many tanks etc. could have been built. That is my take on the whole issue. I disagree strongly about this. There are few German weapons and investments that proved as effective as their submarines did. According to this study below the submarine menace forced the allies to spend 9.6 times as much as Germany did on the battle of the Atlantic ( even if it ignores the cost of allied warships sunk by German subs ): web.archive.org/web/20080409052122/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.htmlThis basically meant that had Germany not invested into submarines then for each tank that the Germans can afford to build extra due to not fighting in the Atlantic the Allies can instead afford to build 9.6 equivalent tanks ( or a whole lot more cheaper Sherman tanks ), and land them in France in 1942 or 1943 instead of 1944 as Historical. Germany was much better of trying to sink the Sherman tanks on convoys crossing the Atlantic then fighting them on the ground. From 1939 to the end of 1942. Totally agree with you. In the later part of 1942 onwards they became less and less effective as allied ASW became more and more effective and Enigma was cracked. From 1943 onwards, the resources devoted to U-boat construction and the development of a revolutionary new type were wasted. Ultimately, it was a war that the Nazi's couldn't win regardless of what they did. They could have made things bloodier and maybe gotten better terms but they could not win.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 3, 2018 23:00:48 GMT -6
I disagree strongly about this. There are few German weapons and investments that proved as effective as their submarines did. According to this study below the submarine menace forced the allies to spend 9.6 times as much as Germany did on the battle of the Atlantic ( even if it ignores the cost of allied warships sunk by German subs ): web.archive.org/web/20080409052122/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.htmlThis basically meant that had Germany not invested into submarines then for each tank that the Germans can afford to build extra due to not fighting in the Atlantic the Allies can instead afford to build 9.6 equivalent tanks ( or a whole lot more cheaper Sherman tanks ), and land them in France in 1942 or 1943 instead of 1944 as Historical. Germany was much better of trying to sink the Sherman tanks on convoys crossing the Atlantic then fighting them on the ground. From 1939 to the end of 1942. Totally agree with you. In the later part of 1942 onwards they became less and less effective as allied ASW became more and more effective and Enigma was cracked. From 1943 onwards, the resources devoted to U-boat construction and the development of a revolutionary new type were wasted. Ultimately, it was a war that the Nazi's couldn't win regardless of what they did. They could have made things bloodier and maybe gotten better terms but they could not win. Well, I am going to debate whether the German's ever had a chance to win the war, 20-20 hindsight tells us that the answer is no. However, once in the war, their only real chance was to: A. Not invade Russia B. Maintain U-boat warfare on British supplies coming from the US. C. Gain air supremacy over the Channel and invade England. They failed on all of these, so it was a matter of time. Whole books have been written on the mistakes the German's made in WW2. At least the Japanese knew they were not going to win the war at the beginning, but as they said " we will die like men". BTW, the Enigma Coding machine was broken by the Polish Cipher Bureau in 1932 with French supplied intelligence material from a German officer who provided the manual for the Enigma for a price.
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Post by axe99 on Oct 4, 2018 0:11:28 GMT -6
Back to the strategy side of things, I think Alex's point is an important one - generally speaking, submarines require a greater-than-submarine effort to deal with - so regardless of the exact specifics of Germany's build program in WW2 (and I'm in the "it made strategic sense to keep going with the building, and they got value right until the very end" camp), a power that builds submarines can't control the seas (in the WW2 period - these days with subs that can do 30kts submerged and fire ICBMS, subs are very different beasties in terms of their power-projection capabilities), but they can make it very expensive for someone else to. Sort of like how 20 submarines means 30-40 escort vessels (or however many it was) were needed to counter them in RtW1 (although aircraft may make countering subs a bit different in RtW2).
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