warspite1
Matrix Legion of Merit

Posts: 41353
Joined: 2/2/2008 From: England Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: brian brian The whole air/Sub thing in WiF is just goofy ("I'll react my Spitfire out to cover my convoys..."). The Courageous was sunk in the first month of the war on anti-sub patrol ... and it's planes didn't even have a bomb that could hurt a submarine. Here's a good WWII trivia question for you - what happened to the first British aircrew to attack a U-Boat? The U-Boat captured them! How? Their bombs bounced off the water and destroyed the attacking aircraft, and the chivalrous submariners took them back to Germany with them. It took the Allies quite some time to figure out how to sink subs with planes, but in WiF the Courageous is a very effective convoy escort from the very first turn. Convoys in Flames and the sub-chaser plane units help on this some, but the sub/air rules system could still use some deeper thinking, in my opinion. No country in WWII used fleet carriers as anti-sub escorts ... in fact significant ASW assets were kept around fleet carriers at all times due to the sub threat. And while a SUB counter represents 'about' 15-30 subs, how often does the sub side lose an entire counter without scratching an enemy force that has a carrier? It only took one real submarine to sink an enemy capital ship. SUBs do sink CVs on occasion in WiF, but those numbers will never add up to the numbers in the real war, and the CV sinkings during convoy battles is just silly. I guess you could use SUBs in WiF the way Steve mentions, as part of a 'combined arms' action at sea, but that's not how WiF Admirals nor real Admirals tended to use Subs, except of course that Subs and surface ships might operate in the same seas (zones in WiF), so the Subs could finish off stragglers as was mentioned. Warspite1 But the point is Courageous would have been an effective convoy escort if used properly. The problem was that right at the start of the war the Royal Navy used their carriers in the wrong way - to search for U-boats, thus making them vulnerable to attack themselves. The problem in the case you mention was that the attack was made too low and the bomb bounced off the surface of the water - not that the bomb was useless against a submarine. In a follow up attack by a third Skua, U-30 had her conning tower damaged by machine gun fire and was forced to return home. To limit a subs effectiveness just keep her submerged and you have an effective convoy escort. In reality, while the Royal Navy were quick to realise that aircraft vs subs = good idea, their execution was wrong and this took a while to sort out, but as the CW player you now know the answer from the start. This problem is not limited to naval rules of course. Remember this is a strategic level game and unless you want a mountain of individual rules stopping this or that, then you have to accept players will use units to their best advantage regardless of whether its a bit gamey or ahistorical; you can't uninvent history. May be part of the problem is having individual ship units in a strategic level game - but I think Ships In Flames is a brilliant addition and is worth the trade off.
< Message edited by warspite1 -- 6/19/2010 10:11:20 AM >
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England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805 
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