Spotting Subs from the Air

[Sleeper Agent]

I've heard that your scout planes are supposed to be able to spot subs from the air, allowing you to get the drop on them with bombers, however this has literally never happened for me in more than 10 hours of gameplay. The only times I've managed to catch a surfaced sub have been completely by accident. Am I doing something wrong here? The sub spam is easily my least favorite thing about this game and being able to take some of them out from the air would be really helpful.

[byepopejoy]

Submarines are generally invisible on the strategic map. I managed to find one when it got too close to a friendly base and was exposed, but that's about it.

Aircraft could spot submarines in the early releases of the game, but people found that AI subs were easy prey for human-controlled aircraft because they didn't dive until the aircraft were almost on top of them, but human-controlled subs would almost always escape by diving at the beginning of the engagement, so that subs were just an easy source of command points for the human players.

That meant human-controlled subs made dandy pickets for human-controlled task forces, because incoming enemy aircraft would attack the submarine (and almost never hit it) while the task force they were supposed to hit was only a few miles further on.

TFG revised that so subs remained invisible (I think they're assumed to be submerged in daylight) so aircraft just don't see them anymore barring a lucky happenstance.

[Kraznova]

In your config file:

hideStrategicMapSubs":true

Change this to false. Submarines will start showing up on the strategic map again. Otherwise, you need to find them in tactical, once you have aircraft or ships close enough.

[MizuYuuki]

I played for quite some time with subs detectable on the strategic map, and it was simply too east to sink the enemy subs. However, later I found out that you can shorten the dive time and that way it will be more difficult to sink them with aircraft. The main reason that the subs were made invisible on the strategic map is that AI aircraft would waste their ordinance trying to sink subs instead of proceeding on to attack a surface task force in the area. The same problem exists with AI subs attacking ASW destroyer groups instead of slipping past them and continuing on to a more valuable surface fleet target.

[Sleeper Agent]

Originally posted by MizuYuuki:

I played for quite some time with subs detectable on the strategic map, and it was simply too east to sink the enemy subs. However, later I found out that you can shorten the dive time and that way it will be more difficult to sink them with aircraft. The main reason that the subs were made invisible on the strategic map is that AI aircraft would waste their ordinance trying to sink subs instead of proceeding on to attack a surface task force in the area. The same problem exists with AI subs attacking ASW destroyer groups instead of slipping past them and continuing on to a more valuable surface fleet target.

if that's true then it seems like the current state of things is just a really bad band-aid over some endemic AI issues. Maybe I'll change it back after a while but for now subs that are too easy to kill sounds like a blessing!

[MizuYuuki]

Originally posted by Sleeper Agent:

Originally posted by MizuYuuki:

I played for quite some time with subs detectable on the strategic map, and it was simply too east to sink the enemy subs. However, later I found out that you can shorten the dive time and that way it will be more difficult to sink them with aircraft. The main reason that the subs were made invisible on the strategic map is that AI aircraft would waste their ordinance trying to sink subs instead of proceeding on to attack a surface task force in the area. The same problem exists with AI subs attacking ASW destroyer groups instead of slipping past them and continuing on to a more valuable surface fleet target.

if that's true then it seems like the current state of things is just a really bad band-aid over some endemic AI issues. Maybe I'll change it back after a while but for now subs that are too easy to kill sounds like a blessing!

It's fun for a while, but I got tired of doing it. Although they can become repetitive, I like the tactical engagements, but I also want to have interesting operational decision making. I have that now to some extent playing IJN on elite campaign difficulty, giving the AI 800 command points to start, using only 2 submarines for the entire campaign (if I lose them I have none), no Yamato class BBs allowed and only ID ships with the binoculars. Unfortunately, because the game does not have a learning AI, it becomes predictable. After I finish this campaign, I'll play from the USN side which I haven't played before. That will be a new challenge and my strategy will have to be different, but I will be starting with a good understanding of how the game works.