U-boats not a menace

[battlevonwar]

(It is easier to Raid with The Allies than the Axis in many instances)

Unfortunately if you have played as many games as I have played you've come to realize a sad fact. U-boats in most instances are not really good for convoy raiding in the Atlantic at all. Unless you're up against an inferior opponent with little knowledge to how the mechanics of sea battles work(I'm still a rookie after 6 PBEM games and this observation is fully revealed to me)

it's not cost effective nor even a good idea!

The fact is, hunting them is predictable, and you don't require a high level of ASW to damage one or detect one. It may be hard to kill one but you can surround and drive them off quite easily without much of an issue. There are a few rare instances when they can be used when you know where the enemy fleet is but the best use of U-boats is actually as the Japanese used them in surface fleet action. Cause on their own out there they're sitting ducks and anyone who has played as much as me can see this a mile away. Even rookies tend to hunt down my wolfpacks(in 1.3 even easily)

Tech is of little consequence!

Now as far as CV-Battleship Killers, scouts I love U-boats for this and screens. Though for Convoy raiding they are opportunistic at best, they cost too much, they get surrounded(then locked in a hex and cannot escape) then their supply is so low they cannot operate out of that sector.

U-boats are far from a menace once a player learns the 2nd grade naval academy.

(added)
So people do not go off on a tangent here let me explain the U-boat is expensive(though say Germany gets a ton) they must be reinforced when damaged and upgraded. The upgrades I've noted to Advanced Subs 2 don't change much. When out to sea they lose supply and when engaged they also lose supply. To run from a bad situation in silent is really of not much use either cause it's a short run and they get caught, boxed in. They can dish out some damage here but without a surface fleet(airpower) u-boats don't work well alone in the Atlantic. They sort of melt if they meet a determined fleet. Rarely is the RN or French Navy tied up and by '42, it's all over instantly!

[vonik]

ORIGINAL: battlevonwar

It may be hard to kill one .

Indeed quite hard .
An U boat at readiness 0 and strength 1 can still survive 10 attacks and even inflict casualties .
This is an ability that no other sea unit has but of course if the U boats are alone without surface fleet support, they will always loose against a destroyer/carrier fleet which outnumbers them .
However raiding is still quite efficient in the first years when UK struggles with its few MPPS .

Otherwise I agree, once USA enter war if the U boats still dare to raid, they'll get wiped out .

[battlevonwar]

Vonik, agreed, very survivable, but how much does that cost? Say in our game, I raided what, 50-100 MPPs? You destroyed 1 U-boat and a Surface Cruiser Raider at zero loss in ships(say you lost 150-200 MPPs, I lost nearly 600-700MPPs) Who Won that battle? You feel entirely safe till France falls so U-boats are no menace till say after Sept. Oct 40. then Winter sets in so no threat of Sea Lion for a bit. Again then U-boats are not very useful for raiding and but for a narrow window. Also Destroyers are very cheap!

Gotta face it in our game I'm at the Platte River with the Graf Spee trying to escape and do a little fun raiding and there is no happy times to be had. Your RN came in like on a magical carpet ride and ate me, and yea, it was tough? Dive(1 Supply and cannot run, cannot hide, cause it will bump an enemy ship, no sea resupply when U-boats did repair and did resupply at sea)

Now if you stay out at sea with the entire Royal Navy during a few points in the game that's going to get you a Sea Lion. Though it's upwards of 30 or 35 ships if you're a good Economist. Germany doesn't have the resources to devote to The Battle of the Atlantic and be strong elsewhere either.

The trade off isn't worth the investment and u-boats become lemmings a little too early for my tastes!

[Trump2016]

U-Boats are best used with surface ships, combined with land air can be used effectively to conduct Sea-lion, the mechanics of the game make it that way, its too bad with the huge map that is wasn't just u-boats against DD/Air as per historical, why would you want to convoy raid for small amounts of MPP, when you can damage/sink anything else for a higher return?

[MemoryLeak]

You are preaching to the choir. I've complained about the lack of realism and effectiveness of U-boats since the
beginning. Unfortunately I don't believe the programmers are listening.

Impossible to conduct a U-boat campaign that is cost-effective. I kept track of it one game and did manage to
cost the Allies over 1500 MPP's. Then my U--boats were all sunk or heavily damaged and I couldn't afford to
repair or replace them because I was fighting on two fronts.

I would like to see the Allied destroyers required to go back to port every two to three turns to keep them
from darting all over the Atlantic for years without returning to port.

[James Taylor]

What if?  You could actually keep the USSR out of the war!  How about the USA, keeping their convoys to UK, but not becoming an actual belligerent.
 
What if you could fight the Germans to a stalemate in France?
 
Think of it, would it make a difference in the Battle of the Atlantic?  Would it cut down on unit density?
 
All could be done with Diplomacy and then add in intel and espionage.  Would you spend your MPPs there instead of units and research?

[battlevonwar]

MemoryLeak,

indeed, no use of U-boats in major raiding. Destroyers are too powerful as is the way that U-boats interact with them. A U-boat becomes boxed in and has nowhere to run. The way the supply system works and diving system works they cannot escape once the ALLIED opponent learns the 101 of killing U-boats. They are best suited to anything but Raiding except in a few rare exceptions.

Only the most amateur opponent is incapable of hunting down and wiping out a fleet of 2 - 3 u-boats

[sPzAbt653]

Unfortunately I don't believe the programmers are listening.

What a terrible thing to say.

[Leadwieght]

It seems like everyone is describing results of the Battle of the Atlantic that sound a lot like the historical course of that campaign. U-boats cause significant loses until the Allies can create large hunter-killer groups. GB is most vulnerable to tonnage war in the first 2-3 years of the war, then not so much. U-boats are generally not capable of defeating the RN on their own.
Not sure these results are so bad.
Anybody tried building a few extra u-boats beyond the pre-set production ? I am curious if it tips the balance or hurts GB more.

[vonik]

ORIGINAL: Leadwieght

Anybody tried building a few extra u-boats beyond the pre-set production ? I am curious if it tips the balance or hurts GB more.

I did for a test with a friend . The U boats ripped the RN apart .
15 U boats with the KM and RM united .
Admittedly I got Spain on my side, Gibraltar open and the East Front was more or less won .
So I was just building U boats since start 1942 - a few raided to get experience 1 . The rest waited to flood UK ports .
Once this mass hits , it is too late to start to build destroyers because every single UK port was closed by U boats .
In this situation the high survivability of U boats is a factor that the Allied cannot counter if he let himself to be outnumbered .

I am really against the hard cap off - this can unbalance the game in all possible ways .

[MemoryLeak]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Unfortunately I don't believe the programmers are listening.

What a terrible thing to say.

Thank you sir, may I have another one???....

[Leadwieght]

Perhaps a useful minor tweak would be to allow U-boats that are 2 hexes from the convoy lines to cause MPP losses. It would make subs a bit harder to track down

[battlevonwar]

Wait folks, the programmers will listen after other issues that are far more important like game bugs and overall game balance is finally hashed out. It will take a little while of testing but lets keep it constructive.

Reality is that U-boats are a menace to the RN but not the shipping as lone wolves as Historical and I hear what some are saying that the game isn't meant to be historical in that you could have used them to sink Battleships. The Germans did go after Capitol Ships, like Scapa Flow. Though they had huge successes out there in the Seas and the reason being was that it's vast and often the UK couldn't afford to escort their Convoys cause they had too few Destroyers and too few Ships to chase down U-boats. Later that changed. Canada made a huge contribution with very cheap flimsy weak destroyers but they were better than nothing.

Here you can use your surface fleet in a gamy way to just surround and isolate lone U-boats or Submarines. Once boxed in it's sort of like holding a bully by his forehead with longer arms.. Game over for convoy raiding in any location where the RN can get to and back to it's bases in time to deal with things like Sea Lion Threats. Which for a good portion of the game it can do this.

I do know about alternate History and I'm all for it but you cannot use this weapon in the way you would have used it historically at least in the Deep Oceans of the Atlantic where it took the UK till later to figure things out. Reflective perhaps in a nerf on their abilities toward attacking u-boats on convoy raiding purely? Perhaps nerfing down U-boats effect on Capitol ships? So people do not use them as mini-battleships...or give ASW strength. Or perhaps giving the diving ability a better way to avoid a gamy method to eradicate them? I think the last is a great choice.

[Leadwieght]

I guess I don't see it as "gamey" (in the sense of using game mechanics to get an unfair/ahistorical result) if you, as the Allied player, concentrate 5 or 6 escorts to take out a u-boat. I thought thats how the Allies eventually won the Battle of the Atlantic--by being able to find and attack the u-boats with hunter-killer groups.

[battlevonwar]

Leadweight, why didn't they do it? The Allies weren't foolish they had fought WW1 and I could go into reasons why they couldn't do it because they didn't initially.

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignRoyalNavy.htm

Bottom line is other priorities and that's not here in Strategic Command, and yes it's a Grand Strategy Game but in that case the Brits/Canadians and French have too much assets free to do much stuff early on cause in 5 game turns, scrap 2 surface raiders.

As for the rest of the Kriegsmarine and U-boats, scrap cause they're going the minute you send 'em out unless you're doing Sealion. Or I'm doing D-day(and you might get 10% of my trade)

Brits had most the worlds trade ships, Brits had a MASSIVE situation that required destroyers doing crap duties everywhere. What realism lock all British Destroyers but 1 or 2 down to strength 5 for 25 game turns ... The Capitol ships aren't as good at killing raiders

U-boats didn't suffer bad till ASW and more ships could be sent out. Even then losses were heavy till way , way later. But of course the site tells perfectly why the situation went the way it did. Are there alternate strategies, sure there are. With risks? Yes! And there should be!

~look at ships/lives lost on that site. The Convoy War is part of the game for a reason, it's fun but doesn't really count as things stand cause it's hard to raid. Not impossible but a little too hard for game balance reasons. In my OPINION

[DeriKuk]

Instead of having these nuke-powered Allied destroyers ... how about a Researchable TACTIC called "Convoy"? (0-3 levels @ 100MPP per level)

[vonik]

Well apparently the devs decided that the convoy raiding was a minor factor in the strategy game .
The consequence is that the players have to use them in another way and convoy raiding is only used to get fast and cheap experience .
There are other much more ahistorical imbalancing issues in the naval war like f.ex the hopeless Allied situation in N.Africa .

Now that the gamey French Navy suicide which used to cripple the RM was prevented (and it is a good thing), the balance went completely the other way .
The Italian navy can walk around the Mediterranean as it wants and send to N.Africa well supplied megatons of units against which the Allied can do nothing .
One actually gets a paradox that the Germano-Italian armies are much better supplied with much better moral and readiness than the Allied
I'd rather like that the devs spend time to add a convoy route between Italy and N.Africa which can be raided by the RN and impacts the supply of Axis .
Then the subs would start to be a threat .

[battlevonwar]

Actually interdicting the supplies would be really neat! Though I doubt we will get that it's a whole new mechanic!

Vonik, Brits can function in N.Africa! You have to put naval assets there and you have to add more of the right kind of units. You get a free Tank/Several Free Corps and Armies and you can easily send 2 or 3 tanks by 1941. What more do you want? If you cannot whip the Axis there then they probably cannot take Moscow cause half their military is in Egypt. If the UK cakewalks the Med(which was contested until 1942) what's the point of it? People want D-day in '42 insta D-Day

or Italy KO in '41!

the USSR as a balanced power is yet to be seen! Buffing the Western Allies to nerf the German '42 Barbie is no answer to the broader strategic question. Buffing the Russians is the best answer if necessary. I think it may be but time will tell in the next few months.

BTW: I have played a player that can KO the RM with a quarter of the RN. That leaves 75% of it to devour U-boats! Don't forget the Red Navy either which if used right can reduce the KM low.

[vonik]

ORIGINAL: battlevonwar


Vonik, Brits can function in N.Africa! You have to put naval assets there and you have to add more of the right kind of units. You get a free Tank/Several Free Corps and Armies and you can easily send 2 or 3 tanks by 1941.

Of course UK can send ONE level 1 tank with 1 strike in 41 if it has this kind of MPP .
The difference is that Germany can send 1 or 2 elite Pz level 2 with 2 strikes in 1940 what is a full year earlier .
And against that no kind of naval assets can help (unless one wants to risk all carriers while Sealion is still a possibility and even that is not enough) .
These Panzers + DAK have time to be in Cairo and back for Barbarossa without breaking a sweat

Anyway my point was only the unrealistic supply and readiness of Axis especially Italians in N.Africa which could be f.ex threatened by RN convoy raiding if it was implemented .

[battlevonwar]

Vonik, agreed the British tanks are junk and you can scout with your strategic bomber and tactical bombers if Germany is redeploying East and still build and send troops to Egypt. Agreed, not that they will gain ground, heck probably barely hold onto it. Unless you research armor warfare early, if possible? I forget when that doctrine opens for the British. Historically I am guessing that should come with Monty.

Germany can drive through the Mideast with 2 or 3 tanks preferably? A bunch of Air. Though Barbarossa will be weak, so the USSR needs to hold the front line better. Just can she? Rommel probably could have eaten the cake there with all the tanks and supplies he wanted but the cost has to cost the Germans a Massive Barbarossa that gets them to the gates of Moscow. Now they're playing for oil? Problem is, oil isn't essential in our game.

Though maybe Devs will implement that later. That would make the British fighting for Egypt BIG. Now, not so big. I have taken Egypt and lost the game along with Persia! Basically though, I love cutting Persian Gulf Supplies to the USSR, who doesn't?

How big and bad do the Soviets get, what kind of skilled player can offset the seemingly OP German Blitzkrieg. Is she too OP? Is that where the true weakness in the Allies is? I am feeling that more so(brits had their butts handed to them by a few baby German Divisions until 1942 historically in Africa) How about having to pay as Germany to keep the supply lines open? More trucks, less MPPs for the USSR?