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juliet7bravo -> (5/29/2002 12:06:01 AM)
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My first full run through of scenario #17, playing as Allied, historical, full realism ect...
By mid-June '42 I lost 12 SC's, 4 DD's, and 3 PG's in ASW ops around Numea, not to mentioning sending 4-6 DD's back to Pearl after being badly damaged. If the DD's hadn't been hit very close to Noumea, so I could immediately rotate them to Pearl, they probably would have sank as well. Didn't sink or badly damage a single IJN sub BTW.
In the same time frame, I lost every "S" class sub to IJN ASW. Simple story...IJN sub meets USN, USN dies. USN sub meets IJN, USN sub dies. Literally, I didn't have a single "S" class sub survive its first contact with an IJN ASW capable ship of any type. As soon as you see the "attacks with Type 95 DC" message show, you can write off another sub.
The only effective USN ASW weapon I've found is to chase the IJN subs with DM's and drop mines on them...IJN subs appear to have a "magnetic attraction" (har har) to mines. By July I'd sank 4 IJN subs with mines.
I tried SC TF's set in every combo of SC's, DD's, and PG's. I tried sitting offshore on patrols to gain experience. I've seen little improvement in experience, period. Even ASW ships that are part of a SC TF that's been attacked don't seem to gain much (if any) experience.
I've yet to see a single attack by AC on a sub of either side. I've tried loading bases where I know there's IJN subs with PBY's, Bostons, and B-17's set on ASW. They find the subs, but never attack.
Something isn't right. There's a trade off point between over effective ASW and the survivability of the ASW platform. I don't neccesarily think the USN ASW ships should be more effective sub killers at low experience levels, but they should at least have a hope of surviving long enough to gain enough experience to be effective. I don't even bother using SC's any more, they sit in the ports at Noumea and Brisbane.
Also...the USN subs are too effective against shipping (before they get killed). Trade off there that needs tweaked as well.
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