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SoTAL

First Lieutenant
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Dec 7, 2007
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This is a question that has been bothering me for some time: What use are submarines? Tried to search etc, but nothing showed up.

I'll be grateful for any constructive replies :)
 
Cannon-fodder pretty much, the do come in handy for soaking up fire from battles. Cant say how it works but they do seem to go down first.
 
Submarines are of little to no use.
 
They're not that effective vs. the most modern warships later in the game, but they're relatively cheap and can be used as patrols. Leave packs of them in strategic shipping lanes. You might get lucky and catch an unescorted fleet of French transports or something. At least, these patrols will help you know where your enemy fleets are and can slow them down while you're unloading your transports. Just get them the hell out of there if they get caught by a few hundred British Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers.
 
Thought so, nothing beats stacked Dreadnoughts :D

Thanks for the quick replies!
 
is it realistic, for example can battleships sink subs or are subs immune to certain ship types

Unlikely.
Submarines are just horrible in this game. 1 fire and 4 shock. Guess what else has a fire value of 1? A frigate (you know that small ship you get in 1836 :rolleyes: :rofl:)

In comparison a Dreadnought has a fire value of 20. So submarines are useless.


Submarines might be useful if it were possible to blockade an enemy. But unfortunately blockading only stops resources and nothing more. A.I. can still buy stuff off the international market and supply troops overseas...


But that's just you expecting a military stimulation in a game which is all about Empire building and diplomacy. Have to play Hoi2 if you want a good military game
 
Unlikely.
Submarines are just horrible in this game. 1 fire and 4 shock. Guess what else has a fire value of 1? A frigate (you know that small ship you get in 1836 :rolleyes: :rofl:)

In comparison a Dreadnought has a fire value of 20. So submarines are useless.


Submarines might be useful if it were possible to blockade an enemy. But unfortunately blockading only stops resources and nothing more. A.I. can still buy stuff off the international market and supply troops overseas...


But that's just you expecting a military stimulation in a game which is all about Empire building and diplomacy. Have to play Hoi2 if you want a good military game

Just remember that there is a hierarchy for naval units, and that the numbers are only meaningful when comparing ships from the same level. So even though commerce raiders seem to have rubbish stats, they will beat men'o'war and frigates, as they are at a lower level. Similarly, subs will thrash anything below them, regardless of numbers (and there are inventions that improve those figures). But that said I'm not sure what level subs are at, judging by the way they tend to disappear it's not high compared to WW1 era ships.

The main good thing about subs is they're cheap, both to build and supply, making them useful as disposeable scouts. And even the Royal Navy's ridiculously huge fleets will fall if you catch them early in the war at poor maintainance, and so being able to find and trap ships fast with your many cheap subs so your main fleet can be concentrated is useful (or at least i find that - I'm hardly an expert player).

But yes, overall subs are rubbish, mainly because they don't get upgraded from their early version with "modern" or "early" or "late" varieties. And if you want good naval combat, or even good simulation of navies in this time period, you should look somewhere else anyway.
 
is it realistic, for example can battleships sink subs or are subs immune to certain ship types

Well not only was HMS Dreadnought built with great speed to a revolutionary design, she holds the distinction of having rammed and sunk a U boat. And subs did have an impact in WW1, for example the Lusitania sinking. But I get what you mean, as I said before this is hardly the game to play if you want naval simulation.
 
I'm not 100% sure, I only know about it having read about it here and on Vicki Wiki. But I think it basically is decided by which technology unlocks the ship, eg iron steamers beat steamers beat clippers. I haven't tested it as such, but I do know Denmark's raider took many battles for my Prussian men'o'war fleet to destroy. In fact I don't think I did in the end, it always lost morale and broke long before I could sink it and I wasn't out for total victory.
 
i wasn't expecting much, after all submarines advanced alot to become the menace they were in WW2

Not quite true.
Advances between 1914 to 1939 where relativly small compared to advances 1939 to 1945.
U-boats already were a terror in WW I (Lusitania, the Live Bait Squadron, sinking of 9 warships at a cost of 5 submarines in 1914, ca. 8 million Tonnage overall during WWI at loss of 153 submarins, 52287 BRT each) and largely operated with the same technology (main advances were electric torpedos and larger batteries).
Thats why i doubled torpedo attack and tripled defence for submarines in my game.
 
Not quite true.
Advances between 1914 to 1939 where relativly small compared to advances 1939 to 1945.
U-boats already were a terror in WW I (Lusitania, the Live Bait Squadron, sinking of 9 warships at a cost of 5 submarines in 1914, ca. 8 million Tonnage overall during WWI at loss of 153 submarins, 52287 BRT each) and largely operated with the same technology (main advances were electric torpedos and larger batteries).
Thats why i doubled torpedo attack and tripled defence for submarines in my game.

You're responding to a thread that is almost 2 years old. Thread necromancy is generally frowned upon.
 
why?
 
There'd be a lot less repetition?

My thinking.
If thread necromancy is frowned upon that does not lead to me just not posing a question you are bound to get the selfsame thread every couple of month or so.