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Post by hawkeye on Mar 19, 2021 6:06:28 GMT -6
Are they even worth it?
Situation:
I'm playing Germany, 50% research, super large fleet, harsher peace deals, variable tech, slow a/c development, manual legacy fleet
I started with 43 small 600 ton KE minesweepers, 36 of those are still alive now in 1922.
Over the course of those 22 years, I was involved in the following wars:
Russia - December 03 to June 06 - 30 months
Russia - March 08 to January 11 - 34 months
France - May 15 to September 16 - 16 months
France - October 20 to April 22 (ongoing) - 19 months
Minesweeper issue:
So I have been at war for a total of 99 months so far with between 36 and 43 minesweepers (always on active fleet) and they have swept exactly FOUR minefields.
Meanwhile, I'm currently losing a DDs or KEs every friggin month with the occasional damaged CA/BC/BB thrown in for good measure.
So, there are two questions I have.
1. Why do I even bother building minesweepers, since they quite _obviously_ do F-all?
2. Can I disable the entire minefield thing in the game, like, disabling the tech or something, because it's getting on my nerves?
Submarine issue:
France started the last war with some 20 subs and has now 33.
My ASW rating throughout the war has been above 500 (started at around 600), yet the French subs have only become more (they have now embarked on a massive sub-building program, with 78 under construction), I'm losing DDs and KE regularly (as in about 1 every 1.5 months) to subs - and here I was thinking that DDs and sub-hunter KEs are the natural enemy of subs, silly me!
P.s. about a quarter of those I lose to subs during "spirited gun duels". Seems like the French are mass-producing a coastal sub version of the Surcouf - with 1910 tech - yeah sure.
Oh, almost forgot the questions.
1. So, what ASW rating should I try to achieve to actually put a dent in the French submarine force, because currently, I have
56 x 500 ton DD (legacy)
38 x 1600 ton KE (colonial)
31 x 900 ton KE (dedicated sub-hunter)
on TP (i.e. ASW duty) and if that isn't enough to keep f-ing 30 enemy subs in check, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do
2. same as above, can I disable the whole sub stupidity, because, again, it's really getting on my nerves and I shudder what will happen once those 80 additional French subs become operational.
P.P.s.
In addition, if I, with my _vast_ armada of support vessels (127 DDs, 105 KE) have those problems, how can France, with 47 KEs and 11 DDs, 2 CLs and 1 CA left have _any_ ship available for combat and/or foreign station instead of having them all constantly in the yard or sunk by mines and subs?
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Post by dia on Mar 19, 2021 11:56:25 GMT -6
Regarding minesweeping I find you need at least 50+ to make an impact. 200-tonners work just as well as larger vessels.
As for submarines I've had experiences where I was barely making a dent in enemy submarine numbers with at least 250 ASW ships and at least 500 flying boats on lvl 19 ASW tech. Pretty sure ASW score offers diminishing returns so you might be better off mass producing tiny, cheap "torpedo sponges".
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Post by director on Mar 19, 2021 11:57:29 GMT -6
You will lose escorts every month - in my last war as the US I was losing a couple per month, and a couple of subs too. It's just the way the game models ASW warfare. Yes, escorts are the natural enemy of submarines, and therefore submarines are not shy about killing them if they can. Read up on the Atlantic war, if you haven't already, and take a look at those losses. Mineweeper success is not judged by how many fields they completely sweep, but by how much they keep your ships from driving into them. As such it is hard to tell - with my US fleet I'm having at least one warship strike a mine each month and another hit by a submarine, plus losing at least two DDs and a KE or two to sub attacks. Unfortunately, it is the cost of doing business. In my opinion your 600-ton KEs are too small; you want 900-ton vessels with added DC storage, 4 K-guns and an ahead-throwing ASW weapon if you can get it. I've never tried dia 's approach of using lots of smaller ships - since the expensive part is the hull, engines and crew I tend to build for quality rather than quantity. I always put high priority on ASW from day one. My rule-of-thumb, brought over from RTW1, is to have two times as many ships on TP as are required. Once France gets into a war, and especially so if they lose a conventional battle or two, they mothball the main fleet and go all-out building subs. The only hope you have is that their sub losses will be proportional to the number they have and build. I don't know if you've experienced that (IE run an all-sub campaign) but having to build 6-8 subs per month is a grind. The only thing you can do - as Britain and the US had to do in two world wars - is maximize the ASW potential of your escorts (900-ton, depth charges, 4 k-guns, ahead-thrower) and maybe build a few with minesweeping gear too (that halves the ASW score, but I keep 8-12 around just-because). My current US fleet has 64 KEs and two dozen or so older DDs refitted for ASW work, but that's the US - I'm currently building 4 battleships I don't really need just to use the money. I'd say you should be OK with 24-32 'good' KEs supplemented by old DDs... keep at least twice as many hulls as are required for TP. Since you're into the air age make sure you keep your airbases maxed and fit them with at least one squadron of flying boats and/or floatplanes. France may well be taking losses from your mines and subs - depending on their tech levels and the number of ships they deploy on ASW work - you can go dig up info on their losses. But unfortunately, once the submarine 'comes of age' they are expensive and irritating to deal with. |
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 19, 2021 13:05:39 GMT -6
In my opinion your 600-ton KEs are too small; you want 900-ton vessels with added DC storage, 4 K-guns and an ahead-throwing ASW weapon if you can get it. I've never tried dia 's approach of using lots of smaller ships - since the expensive part is the hull, engines and crew I tend to build for quality rather than quantity. My 600 ton KEs are dedicated minesweepers that never go on TP because I want them to, you know, sweep mines. My sub-hunters are 900 ton KEs but since I am playing with 50% research rate, there are neither increased DC storage nor K-guns yet. BTW, I _hate_ building ships during a war that are scrapped as soon as the war is over, so I approach this the same way. As for having twice the number of ships on TP than required, well, I have about 5 times the required number on TP - doesn't really help a lot. Oh, and I have no airbases unlocked yet (airship bases I have), though France has some and I _do_ have researched planes (well fighters, floatplanes and flying boats) - which is also pretty stupid. I can build planes but I am too stupid to put together a shed next to a field of grass to house and have them fly off of? Seriously? As for ~30 good sub-hunters, um, I _have_ 31 x 900 ton KEs that are as good as I can make them. I have also put more than 50 of my legacy DDs on TP as well as some 30 x 1600 ton colonial corvettes - and I'm not making the slightest dent in the French submarine force, on the contrary, the number of French subs increases. I'm sorry, but this is BS Finally, the battle of the Atlantic. According to Wiki (yes, yes, I know, not the most reliable source), the allies lost a total of 175 warships to u-boats while Germany lost 783 U-boats. So a ratio of more than 4 subs for every warship and that's most definitely _not_ what I'm seeing. Now, you might say that my ASW tech isn't all that good yet and you'd be correct. But then, the submarine tech is equally bad as of yet, so that should cancel each other out, no? Last (I promise  ) as for the subs going after the escorts. Given the available tech, we are talking about the equivalent of a German Type II coastal submarine here. I kinda doubt any sane submarine skipper would try to _actively_ go after a destroyer or a sub-hunter corvette if he can avoid it (again, I'm not talking Type VII or IX, I-class or Gatos here) and the idea of a Type II winning a gunfight vs. a DD armed with two 7.5cm and two 5cm guns or, heaven forbid, a 900 ton sub-hunter corvette armed with two 10.5cm and four 7.5cm guns is, quite frankly, ridiculous. |
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Post by wlbjork on Mar 20, 2021 2:16:05 GMT -6
We don't know all the "behind the scenes" work for ASW.
We have seen reports that fitting 5" guns to ASW vessels causes them to be more likely to win the gun duel pop-ups.
We have seen suggestions that speed is needed to counter submarines. As far as I know, this hasn't been formally tested although it is a logical thought. If subs have a hidden speed rating assigned, ships that are too slow will not be able to stay within range to prosecute the contacts.
On the whole though, I agree that submarines are too effective at killing or damaging warships.
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Post by christian on Mar 23, 2021 18:10:36 GMT -6
Submarine losses are capped at 6% every month. This means France quite literally cannot loose more than 6% of their subs every month. What this effectively means is that the maximum amount of losses suffered by France every year assuming they have 33 submarines is 1.98 subs a month. In short this means if you loose a destroyer a month you are essentially trading a destroyer for a submarine. The literal only way to not loose the war vs submarine spamming is to sink submarines faster than they can produce them. Now since sinking amount is capped this means that you actually just need to hope the enemy cannot produce more than 1 or 2 a month. If they can produce more than 1 or 2 a month you cant do anything Infact i ran into the exact same problem when fighting the US on fleet size 10. I had defeated their surface fleet along with the Netherlands and they just started spamming submarines. I built ASW but it did not help or matter as i consistently had of my 1-2 capital ships in port due to repairs. Luckily i did not loose any large ships permanently but they had to constantly get repairs. It is not only incredibly frustrating because the AI resorts to sub spamming every time they loose but also because you actually cant do anything against it. Credit to Mango on the discord for finding this. Linked a screenshot of Mango on the discord testing it. |
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 24, 2021 0:01:56 GMT -6
Thank you for sharing this, even though the fact that there is such a limit leaves me quite speechless.
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Post by andy3536 on Mar 24, 2021 5:46:06 GMT -6
I had noticed this aswell. High ASW never seems to increase the sub kills in the way it should.
It does seem to protect merchant vessels as losses do appear lower due to more ships on trade protection.
The number of warships getting torpedoed though still seems high.
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Post by janxol on Mar 24, 2021 6:44:31 GMT -6
While I haven't done much testing I can say the 6% doesn't seem right to me. Having 9 submarines in service, I was perfectly capable of losing two of them in one month, which is definitely more than 6% and more than 1 (so no lower-bound cut-off). So while I don't doubt there's a limit somewhere, I'm not sure if it's defined as clearly or whether there's something more going on under the hood.
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Post by christian on Mar 24, 2021 7:30:29 GMT -6
While I haven't done much testing I can say the 6% doesn't seem right to me. Having 9 submarines in service, I was perfectly capable of losing two of them in one month, which is definitely more than 6% and more than 1 (so no lower-bound cut-off). So while I don't doubt there's a limit somewhere, I'm not sure if it's defined as clearly or whether there's something more going on under the hood. Its not actually been tested to see if the 6% applies to the player as well or only to the AI If you doubt the 6% you can test it yourself by giving yourself a stupidly large ASW value and fighting a nation with alot of subs |
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Post by williammiller on Mar 24, 2021 9:17:23 GMT -6
Submarine losses are capped at 6% every month. This means France quite literally cannot loose more than 6% of their subs every month. What this effectively means is that the maximum amount of losses suffered by France every year assuming they have 33 submarines is 1.98 subs a month. In short this means if you loose a destroyer a month you are essentially trading a destroyer for a submarine. The literal only way to not loose the war vs submarine spamming is to sink submarines faster than they can produce them. Now since sinking amount is capped this means that you actually just need to hope the enemy cannot produce more than 1 or 2 a month. If they can produce more than 1 or 2 a month you cant do anything Infact i ran into the exact same problem when fighting the US on fleet size 10. I had defeated their surface fleet along with the Netherlands and they just started spamming submarines. I built ASW but it did not help or matter as i consistently had of my 1-2 capital ships in port due to repairs. Luckily i did not loose any large ships permanently but they had to constantly get repairs. It is not only incredibly frustrating because the AI resorts to sub spamming every time they loose but also because you actually cant do anything against it. Credit to Mango on the discord for finding this. Linked a screenshot of Mango on the discord testing it. I'm pretty sure there is no such cap, rather at least not an intentional one. I have pinged Fredrik W to check and see if there is a possibility that this can occur in the code/game.
Thanks!
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Post by seawolf on Mar 24, 2021 18:21:42 GMT -6
Submarine losses are capped at 6% every month. This means France quite literally cannot loose more than 6% of their subs every month. What this effectively means is that the maximum amount of losses suffered by France every year assuming they have 33 submarines is 1.98 subs a month. In short this means if you loose a destroyer a month you are essentially trading a destroyer for a submarine. The literal only way to not loose the war vs submarine spamming is to sink submarines faster than they can produce them. Now since sinking amount is capped this means that you actually just need to hope the enemy cannot produce more than 1 or 2 a month. If they can produce more than 1 or 2 a month you cant do anything Infact i ran into the exact same problem when fighting the US on fleet size 10. I had defeated their surface fleet along with the Netherlands and they just started spamming submarines. I built ASW but it did not help or matter as i consistently had of my 1-2 capital ships in port due to repairs. Luckily i did not loose any large ships permanently but they had to constantly get repairs. It is not only incredibly frustrating because the AI resorts to sub spamming every time they loose but also because you actually cant do anything against it. Credit to Mango on the discord for finding this. Linked a screenshot of Mango on the discord testing it. I'm pretty sure there is no such cap, rather at least not an intentional one. I have pinged Fredrik W to check and see if there is a possibility that this can occur in the code/game.
Thanks!
To add to this, I saw a similar cap at around 1500 ASW, in that 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000 etc, would sink the same number of submarines (roughly 6%, but 1400 and other numbers would sink less |
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Post by williammiller on Mar 25, 2021 9:58:59 GMT -6
I asked Fredrik W about this, and his reply is "There is no such intentional cap.". We will check to see if there is any issue in the code that could cause some sort of limitation. |
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) as for the subs going after the escorts.
