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Post by cogsandspigots on Apr 22, 2020 7:48:23 GMT -6
I think it’s currently too easy to win against the AI using large numbers of submarines. It’s not that subs are too powerful, the player can counter AI subs with large corvette fleets and flying boat squadrons. I think that the AI should behave in a similar manner. If monthly merchant losses to subs is too high, the AI should implement a vast corvette crash build, and activation of flying boat squadrons, even if they have to halt capital ship construction to do so, just as the player would. This would help to make winning through submarine warfare still viable, but not as simple.
Edit: some additional thoughts
Having the AI be reactive would give the player about a 1-2 year window to beat the AI into submission with sub warfare before the countermeasures become active. Just like in real life when the vast numbers anti sub vessels coming into service in 1942 and 1943 made German submarine effectiveness drop off drastically.
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Post by deadmetal on Apr 22, 2020 9:40:48 GMT -6
It's quite surprising (actually it isn't) how it's not fixed yet. It's a "sure victory button". More precisely, it's pasting '12' and pressing 'build' button in the submarine build menu, many, many times, to the point where your budget will run dry in 14 months period, then repeating the same procedure after two game years or so.
I can just run away from every surface battle and still wreck my enemy with my multi million ton submarine fleet. It doesn't even depend if I'm fighting GB or Russia - the effectiveness of my sub fleet will be overwhelming in both cases and I won't even need to build my surface fleet, throughout the whole campaign. That's in a game centered around building a surface fleet.
Having enemy react to the players use of this "I win" button - and react accordingly - is a must. Yes, the enemy should even put on hold the building of all of its surface ships - and even start mothballing and / or scrapping the built ones - and put almost all of the funds into ASW warfare (and ASW research), if the player decides that they want to bring the war underwater. And yet even in such scenario, winning through submarine action would be too easy.
Few more suggestions I have:
1. What a player could still achieve trying to max out their sub fleet, should depend on how much is their enemy dependent on the ocean supply lines.
2. If there's war, some (could actually depend on the enemys ASW action) submarines would be returning home damaged and needing repairs. The repairs would of course be done automatically.
3. Both player and AI would be able to conduct large air raids on enemys submarine bases, which if successful, would lower dramatically or even disable players ability to build and maintain (and therefore to operate) their subs.
4. Building very large number of subs gets very complicated - there are serious delays - +100% build time or even longer delays for example, especially so if enemy finds out about it and starts conducting air raids against your unfinished subs.
5. A starting screen setting to choose effectiveness and / or price multiplier of submarines in your campaign (with enough weight).
For now, before the more complicated changes, just implement a simple option described in the 5th line of my suggestions. It would literally take just a few minutes.
It might sound like I hate subs, but that would be a wrong impression. I'm actually a u-boat fan and I've spent a lot of time playing Silent Hunter games. However, I can't stand something so broken that you can use it to completely bypass the core mechanic or purpose of the game (of the historical simulator in this case). I believe the developers, who are charging 35 euros for their 2D game, should not be able to stand it as well.
Until something serious about it is done, for my next playthrough (if it's ever going to happen), I'm going to disable sub research in the savefile, if it's possible to do so of course. If this game wasn't pointlessly hardcoded of course, modders would have already fixed it - a free service that the developers don't want apparently.
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Post by cogsandspigots on Apr 22, 2020 9:48:28 GMT -6
Cynicism aside, I do like the idea of having subs getting damaged by ASW. If my ships have to stay in dry dock for a few months from damage, my subs should too.
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Post by smrfisher on May 9, 2020 2:28:05 GMT -6
I don't think it would be a efficient use of dev time for subs to be put into drydock. The vast majority of subs which were damaged in war were lost.
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Post by rimbecano on May 9, 2020 20:58:40 GMT -6
I don't think it would be a efficient use of dev time for subs to be put into drydock. The vast majority of subs which were damaged in war were lost. Yeah. Given that the point of a sub is to have no buoyancy, they tend to have big problems in very short order when you knock holes in them.
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Post by potrero on May 10, 2020 2:02:23 GMT -6
Instead of completely abstracting subs as it is right now, have the player deploy subs to operational theaters as with surface ships. Want to strangle Japan’s sea lanes? A bunch of coastal subs in French or British home waters ain’t gonna do it. You need fleet boats, and you need to send them to the western Pacific. They also need to add a “long-range submarine” category to the game, and scale the effectiveness of your submarines according to their range vs the distance from your closest base to the enemy’s major supply routes.
Submarines still wouldn’t be controllable in battles, but they would work more realistically in the campaign.
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Post by mobeer on May 11, 2020 15:51:40 GMT -6
In peacetime I generally have more escorts and destroyers than the AI nations. In game, as of 1927 in peace AI Great Britain has: 18 BB, 10 BC ... 21 DD, 6 KE. It has no chance in war against submarines but will sink my (Japan) surface fleet with ease.
Both player and AI need some sort of option to concentrate on ASW, whereby (for a cost): - merchant ship sinkings become less serious (representing more merchant production) - escorts and planes are more active against subs - for AI, more small escorts are built
I also think the effectiveness of planes and escorts in preventing attacks needs increasing.
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Post by cabalamat on May 20, 2020 17:27:46 GMT -6
Deadmetal,
you are right, the game as it stands is terribly unbalanced. Going through your suggestions.
>1. What a player could still achieve trying to max out their sub fleet, should depend on how much is their enemy dependent on the ocean supply lines.
Very much agree. Island nations like Britain or Japan were much more vulnerable to trade warfare than continental powers such as USA or Russia.
Countries like Germany or France were more or less vulnerable depending on who they were friends with, e.g. a Germany allied to Russia is not going to have difficulty getting supplies from landward routes, so will be much less vulnerable to trade warfare.
Maritime trade was one of the main reasons naval warfare happened, so the game should make more efforts to model this if it wants to be at all accurate on a grand strategic scale. It doesn't really attempt to do so at present.
>2. If there's war, some (could actually depend on the enemys ASW action) submarines would be returning home damaged and needing repairs. The repairs would of course be done automatically.
Reasonable.
>3. Both player and AI would be able to conduct large air raids on enemys submarine bases, which if successful, would lower dramatically or even disable players ability to build and maintain (and therefore to operate) their subs.
Or battleship raids; 16" gunfire would mess up most shore installations.
>4. Building very large number of subs gets very complicated - there are serious delays - +100% build time or even longer delays for example, especially so if enemy finds out about it and starts conducting air raids against your unfinished subs.
Disagree. This is very unrealistic; in reality the more you build of something the cheaper the unit price.
> 5. A starting screen setting to choose effectiveness and / or price multiplier of submarines in your campaign (with enough weight).
Yes!
> Until something serious about it is done, for my next playthrough (if it's ever going to happen), I'm going to disable sub research in the savefile, if it's possible to do so of course. If this game wasn't pointlessly hardcoded of course, modders would have already fixed it - a free service that the developers don't want apparently.
TBH I sometimes think the developers don't want feedback, or at least feedback that disagrees with their preconceptions. Prove me wrong, developers!
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Post by williammiller on May 21, 2020 9:36:43 GMT -6
We try to read every post and suggestion here, and we also receive those via email and at other websites as well - so we do listen, and we have implemented literally *dozens* of players suggestions into RTW2 so far, and I am quite sure more will be coming in the future. We may be able to make changes to the games submarine system in the near future, all I can say at this point it that it is one of our considerations for major changes, limited by our manpower and time restraints.
Thanks.
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Post by slipstream on May 24, 2020 11:22:55 GMT -6
Perhaps one change that might help balance things is to put a limit on the number of subs that can be built at one time. Right now, it seems that every nation has 50 fully capable shipyards, and we can build 500+ subs at once if we want to, along with any other ships we choose, as long as we have the money. Unlimited shipbuilding is totally unrealistic. It's a pet peeve of mine. This game should be a little more realistic than that concerning shipbuilding capabilities. Ok, getting back to the point...
Here's some ideas to ponder... Impose a starting limit of 20 subs that can be built at any one time, except during war, when that number can double to 40 subs. When submarines are first researched, their reliability number should be a low random number (between 10-20) that is based on each nation's technical ability, and production times should be longer for nations who haven't built a lot of submarines yet. Also, to keep players/AI from spamming huge sub fleets, the number of subs should be no bigger than 25% of the nation's naval fleet during peacetime, and no bigger than 50% during wartime. After a war, no new subs can be built until the sub force is again below 25% of the naval force.
Submarines should also suffer from attrition, and obsolescence should affect subs as well as ships. I can build 100 subs when they first become available that have a low reliability number, and still have some of those very early subs fighting 30 years later. Who would keep a 30-year old ship around, much less something so technically advanced and quickly obsolete as a sub? So one solution might be forced obsolescence. Any sub that has a reliability factor that is 25 points below the latest sub, or at least 25 years old, is automatically scrapped in peacetime. Also, sub reliability should increase more slowly (random 1-5 pts) from new research (it's always 5pts, IIRC). That way, subs won't gain higher reliability numbers as quickly, making them easier to kill. The enemy's ASW skill and numbers matter too. But first, a brief explanation about merchant ship numbers in relation to the game. The game should compute and display how many merchant ships each nation requires each month to be at 100% capacity. Each nation has different needs from the others, like more territories to maintain and trade with, and so will require a different number of merchant ships. For some nations it might be 50 ships; for others, it could be 250+ ships. As each nation's industry (ship-building) becomes more developed through the years, its raw material needs will increase as well, meaning more merchant ships are required. This number is important for the following reason: to compute the number of ASW ships required to protect our merchant fleet.
All nations should be required to have at 10% ASW force/merchant ship ratio, but that is hardly enough protection against aggressive submarine warfare. But if a nation has a higher ASW force/merchant ship ratio such as 20%, then enemy subs will have a harder chance to sink ships, all the way up to a ratio of 50%, where even experienced enemy subs will have a harder chance of sinking any ships. And if a nation has any destroyers with a good or elite rating in their ASW forces, then some enemy subs might encounter them instead of the usual corvettes, and suffer higher losses. Adding elite "hunter killer" destroyers to your trade protection force should greatly negate a lot of the benefits that enemy subs might enjoy against your merchant marine otherwise. I'm not sure how true this is in the game right now, though, because I don't see a lot of enemy subs being sunk, or my own, for that matter. Strong ASW forces should have a more lethal effect against submarines, I think.
These are just some ideas that I had that might curtail sub-spamming and the huge imbalance they have on the game. I really wish submarine warfare was more detailed in the game. Subs should really be based at ports like surface ships, and there should even be a message when one of them returns from a successful patrol of sinking ships. I read the book, "Submarine!", by Capt. Edward Beach, years ago when I was a kid, and it vividly described many harrowing war patrols by different US submarines in WWII, but it also described how proud the officers and crew felt to be coming home from patrol with a broomstick fastened on the sub's mast as they entered port. A "clean sweep", signaling to everyone working on the docks that they had had a successful patrol. One more thing for the developers: PLEASE REMOVE that dreaded message about my sub sinking a passenger liner from the game, or at least make it happen only once per game. Only one time, did that happen in real life. I once received three of these messages in quick succession - in less than six months. I swear, I didn't know that there were that many Lusitanias in the ocean! I had everybody declaring war on me. It's very annoying, unrealistic because it happens many times, and there's no way to stop it from popping up. Honestly, I think it would be better if you just prohibited unrestricted sub warfare until the first war after 1930. This could be another way that early submarines' effectiveness could be regulated.
Edit: I have to retract my claim that the Lusitania was the only passenger liner sunk by the Germans in WWI. Aeson showed me how much one can learn via Wikipedia. And I'll admit that these sinkings, caused by Germany's continued unrestricted submarine warfare strategy, did in fact bring the US into the war against Germany, as Dorn has stated below. His subtle reminder that this is the reason for this particular game mechanic's existence is unavoidably clear. While it's not my game, I would like to see it improve. Maybe reducing the odds of this event happening, but if it does, then the most hostile nation toward you will immediately declare war on you. Or, perhaps even better would be this:
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A decision message pops up if you sink a passenger ship, saying: "Nation X is very upset that you deliberately sank a passenger liner and killed many (Nation X people). They demand that you cease this barbaric activity immediately or there will be harsh consequences!" Your choices would be:
A) "We won't be bullied about how we conduct our war!" Prestige +1 Tension +4
B) "We have already decided for ourselves to stop sinking ships without warning, and to stop targeting passenger ships." Tension +2 (Unrestricted sub warfare will be locked out for you for one year, unless Nation X declares war on you before then.)
C) "It is a terrible tragedy, and we are deeply regretful. It will never happen again!" Prestige -1 Tension +1 (Unrestricted sub warfare will be locked out for you for the remainder of the war, unless Nation X declares war on you before then.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Either of these would seem to be a more plausible and strong reaction to sinking a passenger liner filled with that nation's citizens, I think.
P.S. For what it's worth, I really like the idea of including more decision messages (or whatever you call them) into the flow of the game. It's like you are controlling the game's (and your) destiny, and it makes the game a little different each time. I just don't like it when the same one keeps popping up again and again, like the one about the Balkans. There should be so many that none ever pop up twice - maybe about two to four per year x 50 years = 100-200 messages, or 300 to make it more random. I'm sure all of us players of this great game could come up with lots of good ideas, if you needed any help.
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Post by aeson on May 24, 2020 12:21:10 GMT -6
One more thing for the developers: PLEASE REMOVE that dreaded message about my sub sinking a passenger liner from the game, or at least make it happen only once per game. Only one time, did that happen in real life. Lusitania is the most famous such incident, but it is far from the only one - for a few examples, Arabic, Laconia, Amazon, Ancona, and Andania were all sunk by German submarines while in passenger service during the First World War. Similar events occurred in the Second World War, for example Athenia.
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Post by potrero on May 24, 2020 13:46:09 GMT -6
One more thing for the developers: PLEASE REMOVE that dreaded message about my sub sinking a passenger liner from the game, or at least make it happen only once per game. Only one time, did that happen in real life. Lusitania is the most famous such incident, but it is far from the only one - for a few examples, Arabic, Laconia, Amazon, Ancona, and Andania were all sunk by German submarines while in passenger service during the First World War. Similar events occurred in the Second World War, for example Athenia. Very true, but could it be tweaked so that it only happens when subs are operating unrestricted? I’ve had it happen at least a half-dozen times under prize rules. Correct me if I’m wrong, but under prize rules, weren’t subs supposed to stop and inspect a ship to confirm its cargo, nationality, and validity as a target? Isn’t that what the Q-ship’s ruse was meant to exploit? That should eliminate the possibility of a Lusitania/Athenia-type incident.
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Post by aeson on May 24, 2020 15:01:23 GMT -6
Correct me if I’m wrong, but under prize rules, weren’t subs supposed to stop and inspect a ship to confirm its cargo, nationality, and validity as a target? Supposed to, sure. They did not always do so, however .
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Post by slipstream on May 24, 2020 22:03:35 GMT -6
One more thing for the developers: PLEASE REMOVE that dreaded message about my sub sinking a passenger liner from the game, or at least make it happen only once per game. Only one time, did that happen in real life. Lusitania is the most famous such incident, but it is far from the only one - for a few examples, Arabic, Laconia, Amazon, Ancona, and Andania were all sunk by German submarines while in passenger service during the First World War. Similar events occurred in the Second World War, for example Athenia. Well, I didn't know that there were other liners sunk prior to the US joining the war against Germany. I thought the Germans stopped unrestricted sub warfare after sinking the Lusitania and killing so many of its passengers. It looks like, of the five ships you have listed, three were sunk prior to the US declaring war, and one of those - the Laconia, was converted to an armed merchant cruiser for a brief time soon after the war broke out, so maybe the Germans thought she still was one. None involved the huge loss of life like the Lusitania, though. I will admit my error, however, in not researching this before publication. The most mortal mistake one can make in journalism!! The game mechanic still annoys me, though, because it's not just one nation that gets angry, it's everyone - usually two or three at a time. Even friendly nations increase their tension. It should really only affect one nation at a time - the one with the highest tension who is not yet at war with you. That way, you're not eventually fighting the whole world. Not that it would matter really. I have fought against everyone at once and won - because of my huge sub fleet. Submarine warfare is just that over-powering in the game.
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Post by dorn on May 25, 2020 13:11:41 GMT -6
Lusitania is the most famous such incident, but it is far from the only one - for a few examples, Arabic, Laconia, Amazon, Ancona, and Andania were all sunk by German submarines while in passenger service during the First World War. Similar events occurred in the Second World War, for example Athenia. Well, I didn't know that there were other liners sunk prior to the US joining the war against Germany. I thought the Germans stopped unrestricted sub warfare after sinking the Lusitania and killing so many of its passengers. It looks like, of the five ships you have listed, three were sunk prior to the US declaring war, and one of those - the Laconia, was converted to an armed merchant cruiser for a brief time soon after the war broke out, so maybe the Germans thought she still was one. None involved the huge loss of life like the Lusitania, though. I will admit my error, however, in not researching this before publication. The most mortal mistake one can make in journalism!! The game mechanic still annoys me, though, because it's not just one nation that gets angry, it's everyone - usually two or three at a time. Even friendly nations increase their tension. It should really only affect one nation at a time - the one with the highest tension who is not yet at war with you. That way, you're not eventually fighting the whole world. Not that it would matter really. I have fought against everyone at once and won - because of my huge sub fleet. Submarine warfare is just that over-powering in the game. If it annoys you, it means that game is quite realistic as Admirals were not so happy about these incidents. These incidents force USA to enter WW1, so it is quite realistic. We have now a different view on things happened century ago but at that time submarines were new weapon in WW1, sinking neutral merchants, killing neutral civilians was something unacceptable. So game simulates it quite well and it is up to Grand Admiral (you) to decide if you want to use submarines. And if you do so you have all the effect included negatives.
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