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Sub tactics - 4/30/2017 6:58:24 PM

hypeboyz

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Hi all
I wondered how you keep your subs from being detected by asw planes.
When I played sub scenarios (where I can only command subs), I keep my subs within layer and make sure they don't cavitate. Moreover, I keep distance from any enemy surface ships and subs.
But still, my subs are always getting killed by somehow random torpedoes from the sky.

Post #: 1

RE: Sub tactics - 4/30/2017 8:26:03 PM

Dan109

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If you are talking about NI scenario 4, I feel your pain. I'm not sure if the sub being able to hear AC above the water on close passes or hearing sonobuoys dropped is moddeled. They can to an extent, but I've only detected active ones, and if you detect an active one, its usually too late.

I eventually want to try it again, but this time I think I will zoom in very close to the terrain and plot courses which ensure I stay in the absolute deepest parts of the water. My though it that I might be getting detected because my course takes me over a hump, decreasing depth at times. Just like a plane flying AGL, you want to stay in the valleys and not fly over any large hills.

(in reply to hypeboyz)

Post #: 2

RE: Sub tactics - 5/1/2017 6:39:11 AM

hypeboyz

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Thanks for the reply. Not only 4th mission in NI, but also the 2nd mission in northern fury.
I'm not ssn technology expert but as far as I know the sonar can never hear anything above water unless the plane crashes. But your idea reminds me to test if I can periodically raise my radar antenna to get a rough location of asw planes and tried to avoid them.
I also tried deepest possible movements, but the deep sonobuoys could always detect my subs....

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Post #: 3

RE: Sub tactics - 5/1/2017 8:54:27 AM

Gunner98

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Both Northern Fury #2 & #9.7, which are primarily sub based were built well before the massive upgrades to the game that made things quite a bit harder for sub operators.

I simply have not had a chance to go back and re-balance them, they were quite difficult to start with and may well be impossible now - don't know.

Feedback is appreciated, so if you have ideas the thread is still in the Mod & Scenarios page, but when they first came out some of the best players were taking 2 or 3 goes to win.

B

(in reply to hypeboyz)

Post #: 4

RE: Sub tactics - 5/1/2017 4:28:36 PM

KungPao

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The layer in NI4 is very thin and shallow, I don't think it is a good idea to hide in Layer in this scenario. Both the sonobuyos above and below the layer will easily detect you.

< Message edited by KungPao -- 5/1/2017 4:29:04 PM >

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Post #: 5

RE: Sub tactics - 5/2/2017 1:38:23 AM

Rory Noonan

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From: Brooklyn, NY
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Now with the new sonar masking model it might pay to try to keep a noisy contact between you and your hunters, or hide close to a noisy surface ship (in its baffles of course).

This would take a lot of nerve and is no good against active, but should help a lot from the tests I've done.

(in reply to KungPao)

Post #: 6

RE: Sub tactics - 5/2/2017 12:40:07 PM

Cik

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If the objective is to simply stay alive then the best thing is to not move. if you don't move, you likely won't be detected.

often enough though you will have to actually achieve some goal or other, which often involves moving. unfortunately there are some intercept solutions that are going to be 100% sure death as you have to move faster than a very slow crawl to make the intercept.

the trick is to be able to manage risk; often enough whether you live or die depends on a decision you made six hours ago. that decision usually being closing to engage at X speed Y heading and Z depth. unfortunately for the sub engaged against a modern foe, detection is a "vortex" that is mostly impossible to climb out of. count on the fact that initial detection means you will be detected essentially perpetually, for the most part. that isn't usually a situation you can survive for very long if they have ASW helos, though.

anyway, there are some missions for subs that are just impossible (or at least, where your survival depends entirely on the luck of torpedo seekerhead dicerolls) the best you can do often is being able to tell a bad engagement from a good one and choose the latter.

(in reply to Rory Noonan)

Post #: 7

RE: Sub tactics - 5/4/2017 10:29:30 AM

c3k

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LOL... My Los Angeles sub keeps dying in the friggin' tutorial, let alone going out to sea in a combat environment!

Attacking a DDG which has ASW helos is not a healthy plan if I'm in charge, apparently. (The "C" waypoints.)

My hat is off to those of you who are able to work your subs into a more adverse circumstance. I'm at the toe end of the learning curve...and the rest of it looks like a cliff.

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 8

RE: Sub tactics - 5/4/2017 4:21:09 PM

Cik

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granted "C" in the sub tutorial is a pretty adverse circumstance. probably one of the worst actually because:

you are hunting a thing designed to kill you
it's well designed
it's moving fairly slowly so it has good detection characteristics
it has another thing on it's deck that is also designed to kill you
you're outnumbered
you have no real way of detecting it at reasonable standoff distances
it can close with you and kill you at basically any moment

if you can't get "C" down don't worry about it. almost no one can reliably, it's at the "edge of the envelope" for what a sub is actually capable of doing, expert operator or not.

if you want advice with "C"

approach at a crawl, a REAL crawl. 1-2 kn
get into it's path, and then wait
stay in the layer while your screws are spinning, then pop above to scout, then down again, then move, then pop, etc
wait until you are VERY close, ~1-2nm tops
FIRE EVERYTHING
pray the helo was on the deck at that moment and/or it fails to find you and kill you after.

it takes luck or another observer (aircraft, helo, etc preferably with radar) to actually make sure you won't die. as it is you basically have to roll the dice whether the helo is in the air or not and you will likely die if it is as it will come to your last-known and blast you.

the lesson taught by "C" is "don't actually try to kill udaloy with subs, it's a bad idea"

< Message edited by Cik -- 5/4/2017 4:24:37 PM >

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Post #: 9

RE: Sub tactics - 5/4/2017 7:38:01 PM

Primarchx

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Everything here is still salient in Command ... http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3876405

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Post #: 10

RE: Sub tactics - 5/4/2017 11:02:09 PM

ultradave

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Both Northern Fury #2 & #9.7, which are primarily sub based were built well before the massive upgrades to the game that made things quite a bit harder for sub operators.

I simply have not had a chance to go back and re-balance them, they were quite difficult to start with and may well be impossible now - don't know.

Feedback is appreciated, so if you have ideas the thread is still in the Mod & Scenarios page, but when they first came out some of the best players were taking 2 or 3 goes to win.

B

I played NF2 a few times, not having much success. Then after I got tired of losing subs I started it up as the Russians once. Holy &*$# No wonder! Maybe I'll try again and let you know. I don't remember specifics of the Russians, more just the feeling of "Holy *&#$^ " :-)

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(in reply to Gunner98)

Post #: 11

RE: Sub tactics - 5/5/2017 4:50:24 PM

c3k

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Cik,

Thanks for making me feel better. Of course, my many sailors sleeping in the briny deep don't get same warm fuzzy. ;)

I'll keep at it. Your pointers are great.

One question (sorry, I haven't looked it up): that destroyer launched a missile at me (I cheated and used the editor). The instant the missile "touched" my submarine plot, my sub sank.

Is it a nuclear tipped ASW missile? If not, there should be some delay as the torpedo separates, enters the water, searches for the sub, then chases it and destroys it. None of that occurs.

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 12

RE: Sub tactics - 5/5/2017 6:36:42 PM

CCIP-subsim

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quote:

One question (sorry, I haven't looked it up): that destroyer launched a missile at me (I cheated and used the editor). The instant the missile "touched" my submarine plot, my sub sank.

Is it a nuclear tipped ASW missile? If not, there should be some delay as the torpedo separates, enters the water, searches for the sub, then chases it and destroys it. None of that occurs.

Probably! Sounds like an ASROC (or foreign equivalent). You would see a pretty big blast icon if it were nuclear, though, so it could have also been a conventional ASW rocket - you can think of those as very fast, rocket-delivered depth charges, which depending on the fuse mechanism also don't need a direct hit to kill you.

But there are plenty of nuclear ASW weapons in the game, anywhere between 1kt and 20kt in power, delivered by everything from rockets to depth charges dropped from aircraft.

(in reply to c3k)

Post #: 13

RE: Sub tactics - 5/5/2017 7:24:13 PM

Cik

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i doubt it was nuclear. I've never used that sort of charge, but it might be like a bomb, instead of a missile. that is, instead of rolling to hit it flies to your position as fixed by the enemy sonar, then rolls scatter, then blows up and if you are inside the radius where you die, you die. instead of being like a torpedo which seeks towards you and then makes an attack% roll.

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Post #: 14

RE: Sub tactics - 5/5/2017 9:31:14 PM

CCIP-subsim

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Cik

i doubt it was nuclear. I've never used that sort of charge, but it might be like a bomb, instead of a missile. that is, instead of rolling to hit it flies to your position as fixed by the enemy sonar, then rolls scatter, then blows up and if you are inside the radius where you die, you die. instead of being like a torpedo which seeks towards you and then makes an attack% roll.

Actually, I believe CMANO works not through attack rolls but just by modelling blast radius. There is a "roll" based on a weapon's circular error probability in reference to its aimpoint, but beyond that - the game models a blast at a given position/depth, and then calculates a blast radius with the maximum damage points inflicted closest to the center. It works the same way with all weapons, I believe - there is an aimpoint (which for various reasons may differ from the actual target's position) and a CEP radius (modified by various factors) that determine where the warhead detonates, and a blast that determines the damage it does. The damage taken by the target is also modified things like armor class, target's size, and susceptibility to particular kinds of weapon effects. There's remarkably little abstraction there!
Subs are pretty straightforward in that sense - and odds don't stack up well for them against anything exploding nearby.

And nuclear weapons - well, depends on scenario

If you play the Northern Inferno campaign/scenarios, by about the middle of it, those really become common! In fact the majority of tactical nukes I've used in the game were ASW rockets/depth charges

< Message edited by CCIPsubsim -- 5/5/2017 9:36:43 PM >

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 15

RE: Sub tactics - 5/6/2017 1:09:11 AM

Cik

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i don't know. i THINK (grain of salt) that explicitly HEAT / impact weapons work strictly through an attack roll.

you launch
it flies towards the target based on it's seeking for X distance of it's Y max
if it runs out of energy it's incapable of hitting the target, destroyed
once it reaches the target it attacks the target based on it's remaining energy, target aspect, seekerhead quality, other factors etc.
if the seekerhead works correctly it's a "hit"
hit applies damage based on weapon / target characteristics
damage applied

i've never for instance seen a sidewinder "miss" but still damage anything for instance. theoretically this is possible in real life (IE, the contact/proxy/laser/radar fuzing activates, the shrapnel cone hits something else besides the intended target) but very unlikely (the ranges involve making it relatively impossible)

bombs, guided or unguided don't really work this way though. they work as you said: that is
bomb falls
bomb hits near the target as decided by some arcane (but probably correct) formula taking into account CEP / range / ballistic characteristics etc
bomb fuzes
explosion generated depending on warhead weight/characteristics
units caught "within" explosion damaged according to unit characteristics and proximity to center of blast(?)

what i'm saying is that the whatever type of missile it is uses the latter method, so there doesn't necessarily have to be a "hit" roll anywhere involved. the charge simply got close enough and it computed "you're dead" so the sub died.

this isn't a criticism of either method by the way. to-hit rolls make perfect sense for explicitly contact weapons. a maverick generating a blast when that's not actually how it works makes no sense, and a bomb explicitly relying only on a to-hit means that it would lack the characteristics that make it effective.

IMO these two systems perfectly compliment each other. OP is just misunderstanding i think why a "torpedo" didn't have a to-hit and that is because it wasn't really a torpedo, more like a rocket assisted bomb.

< Message edited by Cik -- 5/6/2017 1:15:50 AM >

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Post #: 16

RE: Sub tactics - 5/6/2017 12:11:34 PM

CCIP-subsim

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I think you may be right about the AA missiles and even torpedoes doing the dice roll - I'll have to double-check! (I usually have weapons calculations turned off in my log). I've only paid attention to A-G weapons lately, and I've noticed that everything from dumb bombs to precision cruise missiles to ARMs does now work off of a circular error + blast radius (which I believe used to all be more dice-rolly even a couple of years ago, before updates changed that). I also distinctly recall damage reports from SAMs exploding a given distance from their targets and (sometimes) doing damage by way of blast. Not that I have anything against dice rolls of course - IMO if done right, they are just as good as circular errors and blast radius, or even actual physics, at the level that CMANO works as a simulation

(in reply to Cik)

Post #: 17