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Post by deadmetal on May 26, 2020 14:59:20 GMT -6
This is what I managed to do late game, with slightly increased fleet size from the max value that the game allows - at 10.  Even without going above the max fleet size of 8, that you can set in the starting menu, you can still run a fleet of 2k, or even more subs, at the cost of having basically no surface fleet. But it doesn't matter. You don't need surface fleet. You will win every war with having even less than 1k submarines. What's more, merchant sinkings scale up linearly with your submarine number. There evidently is no limit to how many merchants you can sink - the game just assigns 'merchants sunk' value accordingly to the number of your subs and their effectiveness. You can achieve absolutely ridiculous VP from just spamming your subs. You can win every war in a few months with having just a few destroyers as your surface fleet (minimum required number for TP), and successfully running away from your enemy in every scenario that comes up. Liner sinkings don't scale up with your sub fleet size / enemy merchant sinkings, and so you can maintain your prestige. This is beyond ridiculous really, in a game that tries to create a realistic naval campaign. As it is, it would be better to not have subs at all. |
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Post by cv10 on May 27, 2020 4:43:13 GMT -6
If the AI was building 4000 subs, there'd be good grounds to tweak the system PDQ. However, most games have exploits, and some of them enable the player to 'break' the game if they want to. As this is a single-player game, the simplest solution would be for the player to not build 4,000 submarines.
What is interesting to me is that there seem to be several camps regarding what people want to see with submarines. On the one hand, some want more restraints placed on subs and sub construction, and that's perfectly valid. On the other hand, there have been people that want the cap of 12 submarines per build order removed to make it easier to build more subs in one go.
As to the OP's point, I think that the AI should be tweaked to maintain larger numbers of good quality ASW ships and flying boats. The difficult part will be finding the balance between possible to win with subs vs. difficult to do so. In the meantime, perhaps a house rule regarding either submarine numbers or tactics would help make it more challenging.
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Post by mobeer on May 27, 2020 10:14:51 GMT -6
No problem with (sane) large numbers of submarines. We just need a way to build large numbers of escorts, ASW planes and merchants and have those effective both at killing but also supressing submarines.
Things go wrong when the AI has 32 capital ships and 49 escorts (as in my current game).
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Post by deadmetal on May 27, 2020 14:17:35 GMT -6
If the AI was building 4000 subs, there'd be good grounds to tweak the system PDQ. However, most games have exploits, and some of them enable the player to 'break' the game if they want to. As this is a single-player game, the simplest solution would be for the player to not build 4,000 submarines. Some exploits are more serious than others. This one is very serious, as it allows you to basically not have surface fleet, in a game which is centered around a surface fleet, and still win every war, and very quickly at that. It's a case of a very poor game design. So are you seriously saying that an exploit isn't really a problem and shouldn't be fixed, because you can just choose not to use it? |
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Post by cv10 on May 27, 2020 15:11:41 GMT -6
If the AI was building 4000 subs, there'd be good grounds to tweak the system PDQ. However, most games have exploits, and some of them enable the player to 'break' the game if they want to. As this is a single-player game, the simplest solution would be for the player to not build 4,000 submarines. Some exploits are more serious than others. This one is very serious, as it allows you to basically not have surface fleet, in a game which is centered around a surface fleet, and still win every war, and very quickly at that. It's a case of a very poor game design. So are you seriously saying that an exploit isn't really a problem and shouldn't be fixed, because you can just choose not to use it?
Again, if the AI were doing this, I would see why it would be a problem. However, I fail to see why the limited time of the Dev team should be spent fiddling around with an exploit that only affects people if they decide to use it. |
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Post by deadmetal on May 27, 2020 15:50:20 GMT -6
Some exploits are more serious than others. This one is very serious, as it allows you to basically not have surface fleet, in a game which is centered around a surface fleet, and still win every war, and very quickly at that. It's a case of a very poor game design. So are you seriously saying that an exploit isn't really a problem and shouldn't be fixed, because you can just choose not to use it?
Again, if the AI were doing this, I would see why it would be a problem. However, I fail to see why the limited time of the Dev team should be spent fiddling around with an exploit that only affects people if they decide to use it.Wow ok. I'll just stop here. |
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Post by cv10 on May 27, 2020 15:56:03 GMT -6
That's exactly what I'm saying, and I fail to see why this is serious issue. The only way for this to impact a player's game is if the player decides to use the exploit.
Again, if the AI were doing this, I would see why it would be a problem. However, I fail to see why the limited time of the Dev team should be spent fiddling around with an exploit that only affects people if they decide to use it. Wow ok. I'll just stop here. |
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Post by nobody on May 29, 2020 10:00:38 GMT -6
Should the AI adopt to the players strategy? Yes, but there are obviously limits.
Should the player be stopped from doing ridiculous things? Not really.
Should the game be made more realistic? Probably.
Possible realism to add in this case:
- limited number of vessels to be laid down each turn
- limited number of slipways (ships that can be under construction at the same time)
- political interference
- subs require oil. Have a lot of subs and they will run out quickly and your subs will be confined to their harbors.
- limited torpedo supply
- non-linear effect/efficiency (this can also mean that too few subs have often a negligible effect)
- limited effect by merchant sinking (shouldn't be worse than being blockaded?)
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 5, 2020 5:28:50 GMT -6
This is what I managed to do late game, with slightly increased fleet size from the max value that the game allows - at 10. Even without going above the max fleet size of 8, that you can set in the starting menu, you can still run a fleet of 2k, or even more subs, at the cost of having basically no surface fleet. But it doesn't matter. You don't need surface fleet. You will win every war with having even less than 1k submarines. What's more, merchant sinkings scale up linearly with your submarine number. There evidently is no limit to how many merchants you can sink - the game just assigns 'merchants sunk' value accordingly to the number of your subs and their effectiveness. You can achieve absolutely ridiculous VP from just spamming your subs. You can win every war in a few months with having just a few destroyers as your surface fleet (minimum required number for TP), and successfully running away from your enemy in every scenario that comes up. Liner sinkings don't scale up with your sub fleet size / enemy merchant sinkings, and so you can maintain your prestige. This is beyond ridiculous really, in a game that tries to create a realistic naval campaign. As it is, it would be better to not have subs at all. Uhm, as this seems tempting, I tried to replicate your all-subs strategy, but I found some hindrances to this approach. First of all, production of subs is limited - I am constantly getting messages like these in the log (the number of "subs our industry can handle" is probably linked to the dock size, which was 48k at current):
So, it's obviously not that easy to only field such a number of submarines. And then, during wartime this message pops out constantly (and I'm playing as the US with those three home regions that together already give me a total base capacity of 4800 - and "Increase build area base capacity" seems like a typo):
Oh, and besides that already the sheer number of times that "neutral steamer sunk" event occurs with such a strategy might be the proverbial coffin nail (remember, you're not getting prestiges for ships sunk by your subs). Thus, it appears rather hard to follow the way you proposed, so to summarize this, it doesn't seem to be that much of an exploit, at least in the unmodded game.
Apart from this, one point to adress however might be that the AI appears to be unaffected by the need for a particular number of TP units. It seems just a little unfair and imbalanced that the player controls the only naval power subjected to such a requirement.
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Post by aeson on Jun 5, 2020 7:32:16 GMT -6
"Increase build area base capacity" seems like a typo Why? "Build Area" is the sea zone where your new construction commissions; it's listed as the Build Area in the nation summary both at game creation and in the Almanac, and is the only area specifically defined in the nation file. |
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 5, 2020 11:07:03 GMT -6
"Increase build area base capacity" seems like a typo Why? "Build Area" is the sea zone where your new construction commissions; it's listed as the Build Area in the nation summary both at game creation and in the Almanac, and is the only area specifically defined in the nation file. Ah, I see, thanks. So, when playing the US the base capacity on the North American East Coast (where all new ships are built) is the relevant quantity for submarine operations? And all I can do in order to increase submarine efficiency is to expand Maine and try to snatch Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Bermuda from GB? |
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Post by aeson on Jun 5, 2020 12:56:29 GMT -6
Ah, I see, thanks. So, when playing the US the base capacity on the North American East Coast (where all new ships are built) is the relevant quantity for submarine operations? I would assume so from the message you saw.
You could also improve bases in the Southeast Seaboard and Eastern USA; they may be home possessions, but you can still improve their base capacity, and their base capacity will grow by 50 per improvement cycle, just like any other possession with sufficiently high base capacity.
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Post by wlbjork on Jun 12, 2020 7:38:17 GMT -6
Hmm, this appears to have been fixed with 1.21?
I had ~100 subs, admittedly the weak early models (10 per tech advance in Subs). The AI cheesed* them with about 70 KEs.
*Cheesing - like creaming, but it goes on for longer (Sir PTerry)
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Post by aquelarrefox on Sept 11, 2020 13:00:52 GMT -6
The merchant fleet should me modelled in some way even if you dont build the ships, so having huge losses in convoy defense have long term effects.
Also the effect of the british merchant fleet, japan lost their number when go to war with uk cutting his own supply chain.
This merchant fleet could be a number X witch get higer with the time, and be a Y efective fleet where you get X + 0.15 others countries X, so if all countries have 1000 merchants, and uk 5500, you have efetible 2575 merchant in peace, if you goet a wa rwith no uk ally you get 24225 merchants, but in war with uk you get 1700 merchants, welll is a idea numbers could be fit. have few merchants affect the nation as a bloqueade or you cant acept or do operations.
Something like that could be very nice to see.
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