Ummmm... hows the sub-spam?

[cwemyss]

How's the late game sub-spam in RTW3? I'd honestly forgotten about it, and I'm about to lose a 3-year war in RTW2 because I didn't stay ahead of all my potential enemies' sub-building.

Not that it isnt fairly realistic... Germany built something like 1200 U-Boats. But dang, it's drudgery in a game where subs and ASW are so abstracted. I have no influence on large-scale convoys, no specific ASW training for land- or carrier-based air crews, and nothing I can do from a ship-design standpoint beyond a couple check boxes. Basically, crank out (and maintain) as many 600- or 900-ton KEs as possible, and hope for the best.

[benjamin1992perry]

idk if it would be unrealistic, since the USA victory over Japan is often seen as majorly due to us strangling their supply lines with our sub force. And if we hadn't stepped and built transports and filled them like mad, how long would England have held out against a similar strangle hold? In game I typically built as many subs as I can afford and when I build a new class of DD I keep the old one around as dedicated ASW platforms.

[cwemyss]

Yeah, like I said, not unrealistic. And I largely do the same, in this case I got burned when I had plenty of ASW for any one opponent... but Japan came in with another 150-200 subs. Since then it's been a steady drip of a couple "spirited gun duels" a month eating away at my ASW capacity, a lot of torpedoed capital ships out of action for 3-6 months, and I'm at unrest 12 due to food and fuel shortages.

Could I have had 30+ more KEs on hand? Sure. But from a game standpoint (at least for RTW2) you end up having to dedicate a large chunk of budget (and player management time) to something that's almost completely abstracted, and that I think wasn't intended to be the core of the game.

[dorn]

Aug 15, 2022 22:40:22 GMT -6 benjamin1992perry said:

idk if it would be unrealistic, since the USA victory over Japan is often seen as majorly due to us strangling their supply lines with our sub force. And if we hadn't stepped and built transports and filled them like mad, how long would England have held out against a similar strangle hold? In game I typically built as many subs as I can afford and when I build a new class of DD I keep the old one around as dedicated ASW platforms.

England would held as long as USA is willing to trade. The amount of ship sunk in WW2 was just too low to bring England to knees. It was much closer in WW1. And shipbuilding priorities was set towards sub threat. Technology innovation made uboot life much more miserable especially as aicraft was more common to hunt subs and patrol areas.


Situation got worse with USA was brought to war, as they USN was unexperienced and stubborn to learn from Royal Navy, but it was only temporary.

Germany lost war of innovation. If you look at start of war, they have or starting to have a lot of cutting edge technologies but during 1939 to 1942 their progress was quite small and later they tried to catch up however it was too late.
Some examples:
Jet fighters, tanks, XXI submarines etc.

[maxnacemit]

Still, how effective is the sub spam? And, even more importantly, how effective are SSGs on fleet support?

[JagdFlanker]

how i handle ASW:

if all your ASW DD/KEs have 5" guns or larger you will not see "spirited gun duels" any more

you should try and have at least double, and preferably triple the amount of ships needed on TP

once your 'hand-me down' ASW DDs are larger than 1200t, create and build dedicated ASW ships with two 5" or 6" guns, 1 torp launcher for self defence, and lots of room for future ASW expansion. speed is less of a requirement since they will never be part of your fleet. 'hand-me downs' larger than 1200t start to get expensive to upkeep and i prefer playing the numbers game so from that point on i retire any older obsolete DDs (even if they are only 10 years old) and stick with my dedicated ASW fleet to keep upkeep lower and ASW fleet numbers higher. these ASW ships never need to be retired and can be mothballed between wars to keep upkeep low

i never build KEs so i don't know if their upkeep doubles after 10 years like they used to, but if so then build only ASW DDs since once built they will last until end-game

[benjamin1992perry]

given the current end game is in the 1970s will we get a random event or even a fort style option to built our own SOSUS arrays to combat subs?