Sub Use

[Exterous]

I've never done that much with sub warfare, but CORE has forced me to jump in head first. My first GER game I had large stacks of subs (30 or so) in a couple of fleets and they did well but couldn't cover a wide an area. The next round I tried more fleets of 10 or so subs to cover a larger area in an attempt to bag more ships. I sank around 30 ships then NOTHING for the next two months. I tried upping the compliment to 18 subs per group but that didn't help. I noticed that I had left an area open up by Iceland. Now, were all the convoys heading up that way or am I missing something else? I loaded as the UK to see if the AI could o better than me and they did. Within weeks my convoys were being sunk (but being hit in areas around Portugal and western france and scapa flow). I saved and reloaded as Ger and it doesn't look like they are doing anything different than me. what am I missing?

 

[Ghost_dk]

well I think that with 1.3 came a more fluent convoy ai so you may have to move around a bit as I believe the ai tries to go around areas that are hit often enough, unless it has no other alternative. This by the way is in the hardcoded parts of the ai that we cannot modify upon.

 

[unmerged(23658)]

you bet the AI works!

well I think that with 1.3 came a more fluent convoy ai so you may have to move around a bit as I believe the ai tries to go around areas that are hit often enough, unless it has no other alternative. This by the way is in the hardcoded parts of the ai that we cannot modify upon.

yeh, i'd go with this. i have had some bad luck with sub warfare as the germans.
out of 19 subs i have 2 after 14 months of war [oct 39]. so much for the happy time!!

but i have noticed that when i placed my subs in a region they would destroy convoys/escorts for a month or so then nothing. in fact, [and this, i believe, is why i have no subs left] a few weeks or less after i hit a convoy a destroyer group - with, maybe, a carrier - turns up and ooops! no more subs!

if i change the hunting region then kills continue.

so the ai is pretty sharp. serves me right for not micro-ing my subs whilst conquering europe on land [i left them to patrol for 6 months at a time which obviously meant the ai detected their pattern].
something i have noticed tho. my 2 remaining level 3 subs i still have left have always been on their own. most of my subs were level 4 in groups of 3 or 4.
i think this made them more detectable as my old subs have been solo and have never been in battle [apart from rare convoy kills] yet are still around!!

night/day missions seem to make little difference. i've tried both and both are dead.

but this is good. it means you can't just set your units to do something and leave them to it. how challenging would a game be if you just set a few sliders and let the game run itself [take note! those fools who did MoO3 as a 'macro managed' game...eyurgh!].