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Elessar2 -> RE: Ship retreating makes no sense (12/31/2021 11:43:00 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Markiss
The same is true of subs. When attacked, they can hide, but have no capability to run, since a surface combatant will have a dramatic advantage in speed.
I understand that with subs, this effect gives them an escape ability, and creates a cat and mouse effect that may add something to the game. However, subs of the era could not submerge and then surface hundreds of miles away, nor could they simply out-run their pursuers. This makes the game effect unrealistic. Rather then have this inexplicable flight ability, perhaps the subs could be harder to find, or have to be re-spotted after each attack. This would make them just as difficult to destroy, but would end the silly running.
The main issue is that the game conflates the tactical and strategic levels into a confusing muddle. For an individual submarine in a tactical situation, your analysis might have more merit (such as in a sub sim like the Silent Hunter series). Even then, once contact has been lost, it will be very difficult to find the sub again. Most escort-type vessels won't waste several day's worth of fuel futilely trying to track it down again-it likely managed to sneak away submerged and surfaced many miles away. Over several days it indeed will likely "pop up" a number of hexes away (most of that distance in these boats done mostly on the surface, given the technology of the day).
But in terms of how the game operates your points make no sense. A submerged sub can be easily found, again and again, often by the units which have already attacked it, then piled on by the ones which still have a shot left. It only has a piddly 3 hex maximum submerged "retreat" (note I've argued that this should be alterable in the editor under the "retreat" value there), and every single suitable unit in range will then proceed to pile on until it sunk, as if the attacks take place over the course of a few hours, and not the 1-3 week long turns that SC actually uses.
But even vanilla models a single sub counter as actually being say 10 individual boats. Which is why a recent call for the be-all and end-all of escort-on-sub combat is whether the sub counter is "sunk" rather misses the point, when in fact you've already sunk most of the boats so modeled if its strength is down to say 2. IOW ok fine you got one individual boat, maybe a few; the rest of the wolfpack has scattered to the four winds in the meanwhile; good luck finding them all again. Thus if the sub counter has "survived" it hasn't pulled off a miracle underwater escape of many miles, per se. Attritional ASW combat is thus much more suitable over the strategic-length turns and multi-unit counters that SC has as part of its model, than attempts to model short-term tactical encounters of single vessels which would typically prove to be more decisive.
Absent a massive overhaul of the game, which we won't get at this stage, if the submerged retreat distances are made longer then the sub (counter) can get away more often than not after all of the ASW elements have exhausted their movement points trying to find it again, but likely not without suffering strength point and supply losses first and likely now needing a trip back to base. Note making it necessary to move the escort on top of the sub to find it again won't help a great deal, since they can just keep "mowing" all the possible hexes until they find it again. [Esp. since it rarely moves the full 3 hexes away anyway]
If it were up to me, the two modes would be called Raiding and Scattered; the former modeling an actively organized wolf pack, both more deadly to shipping and individual ship counters and more easily detected & thus vulnerable. The latter modeling the individual boats separated by many miles and thus much less amenable to both detection & serious Strength-point damage, but also less efficient on the attack. [But otherwise semantics schemantics holds here]
In my WitP game attempts to model the USN's unrestricted submarine war against Japanese shipping has utterly failed due to how hopeless a found sub counter's chances are once a large ASW contingent has found it.
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