Submarines: Too Annoying?

[monkspider]

One thing that has been driving me crazy is the little subs that somehow sneak up on my carriers and my destroyers can never find them with the sonar sweep. I think part of the problem is that Destroyers can't move and then sweep, but they are driving me crazy. Anyone else feel this way?

[Tarrak]

The damage the submarines are doing is so weak, it doesn't really matter. Even if one sneaks in all they do is usually one point of damage, sometimes if very lucky two and then they usually die very fast. I personally don't find them annoying at all but on the contrary rather to weak.

[monkspider]

They are weak, don't get me wrong, especially my own subs since the AI never seems to have any problems hunting mine down and I never seem to do more than 1-2 damage. But the AI subs are extremely annoying and hard to find, and they often seem to do decent damage, doing 2-3 damage every few turns to a carrier is nothing to sneeze at.

[apec]

They are weak, don't get me wrong, especially my own subs since the AI never seems to have any problems hunting mine down and I never seem to do more than 1-2 damage. But the AI subs are extremely annoying and hard to find, and they often seem to do decent damage, doing 2-3 damage every few turns to a carrier is nothing to sneeze at.

I got the same feeling re: enemy sub damage, then I realised that if you move your ships at least 1 hex before firing the sub damage is 1 or max. 2 points as Tarrak pointed out.
A good way to avoid sub attack is to rush your destroyers ahead of your main ships course and the next turn do not move them and scan with sonar instead, the following turn move ahead again etc. The problem with this approach is that the overall speed of your fleet is slower that its maximum, however this well represent the issue caused by sub treat.

[deadtorius]

Subs are a lot more useful now than they were in the original beta where once they fired they would be sunk right away. I find they can be a nuisance but if you are attacked by a sub, just make a full move away from that hex. You will likely leave the sub behind and with luck it won't catch up with you later. Once an attack happens you have some idea of where it is and can move a DD into the area to try a sonar sweep. Other alternative is to keep a DD adjacent to your carrier at all times. If your carrier gets attacked the carrier moves away the DD does a sonar sweep, should reveal sub and then damage it badly.
Submarines were not directly involved in naval battles, their main job being to hunt down and sink merchant ships. I read once 75% of the Japanese merchant marine that was sunk was from sub attacks. The few capital ships that were sunk were often taken out after the naval battle when a damaged ship just happened to cross a subs path and then a torpedo would sink a badly damaged ship. I have used my subs for recon purposes, moving to within range of the Japanese carriers in Midway and keeping the enemy ships in sight so my torpedo bombers can find them. I also finished off a carrier that was down to 1 or 2 points with a sub torpedo attack. They are more effective against transports than fighting ships.

[simcc]

If you are playing US then those Japanese subs are annoying as they are range 3 IIRC so it's hard for US DD to sonar sweep unless you fan out your DD correctly.

I find subs very useful to finish off a target after my bombers hit them

[koala404]

Yep, Japanese subs have range three torpedoes. So, looks like you are going to need to position carefully if you want to catch them

A prime use for damaged destroyers is to act as the ASW screen while your full HP destroyers go do some damage elsewhere.

[monkspider]

They are range 3? That is probably why I have had so much trouble catching them. I will have to reevaluate my destroyer strategy.

[simcc]

Generally Japanese have better torpedoes subs range 3 cruisers and destroyer range 4. Hate those cruisers with torpedoes hahaha

[Longasc]

I used a Tambor and a Gato in the "destroy at least 2 BBs" / Ironbottom Sound scenario with Henderson Field.

They sneaked through and scored 2x2 damage on the BB, but they only fired twice, thrice or 4x at max, don't quite remember. The reload time for torpedos is quite long and it seems the early American subs have shite torpedoes.
This is unfortunately only advertised through an "event" message that states upgraded ships should have better torpedoes after Midway or so.

Seems I have to upgrade my two subs to get better torpedoes.
Are they just annoying, useful, a valuable asset?

It just takes 2-3 destroyer attacks to sink one. And crippled they are indeed more annoying than anything else. They are great to destroy transports where they deal a lot more damage than vs warships. Just not too man scenarios where that is needed.

I think being annoying and hurting player ships is the reason for their existence. Destroyers are needed not only because of them, but because of japanese torpedoes. 3-4 J. Destroyers really put out a world of hurt against ANYTHING with their torpedoes. I made sure that my BB has at least 2 DDs and one more ship shielding it from surface launched torpedoes.

As a player I had limited use for them, with 1 BB and only dive bombers slowly killing Nagato class BBs is a potentially costly undertaking. They are dangerous to Cruisers and DDs. They are also good for recon.
I think they are quite okay as they are. Make their torpedoes stronger and its horror. Make them weaker and they just suck. Hard to balance that.

I really appreciate many thing that don't make immediate sense to me after a while. Like this Artillery no defensive fire but anti-tank guns do thing. It makes perfectly sense and it even makes for better gameplay compared to Panzer Corps/General.


I think one way to avoid getting annoyed by submarines or torpedoes in general too much is to play as Japan.

[Dragoon.]

The damage they do is low, but they are able to harm the most powerful ships. I remember the Yamato in '42. Except for torpedoes from subs and bombers everything bounced right off, until the very end. My 2 subs delivered 40% of the damage that took her out. So subs are effective against large vessels like battleships and carriers. Of course you still can use them against easy targets like transports and support ships while your other forces takes out more high value targets.

Like Longasc I used my subs later with great success in Guadalcanal. Not just against the Japanese Battleship TF, and I'm afraid I get an other reprimand from the devs because of it,
but they didn't got teleport away with the rest of the fleet. So I used them to deliver extra supply points which allowed me to deploy a early much stronger defending force.