Really low convoy efficiency what am I doing wrong?

[Morte-360]

I haven't played for a really long time but came back brought the DLC and thought I'd try again. There's a lot of new mechanics to learn and I decided to play as the UK as the new stuff with the commonwealth seemed interesting. I think I've got most of it but the naval system is confusing me. My plan using the new system was to have a big strike force for the North Sea and 2 smaller ones for the Atlantic and a big one for the med. The idea been keeping the Kriegsmarine and RN locked in the NS, Baltic and Med while my destroyer task forces tried to deal with the subs, with smaller strike forces and naval bombers to deal with any that slipped through to the Atlantic.

The strike forces and patrols seem to be working, none of my convoys have been sunk by German surface ships and I've won most of my battles against their surface fleet. I am clearly doing something horribly wrong with the convoy escorts though as the efficiency is always really low unless I devote 3-4 task forces to one sea region and I'm taking stupid losses in convoys. My task forces are 2 light cruisers, a light cruiser using seaplanes and 5 asw destroyers. I sent 3 of them to the Western Approaches and they only had 30%. It seems to be the same for most sea regions. In the Sea of Biscayne a fleet with 4 task forces is only at 3-11% yet it says escort presence in area is 85% that's 32 ships in a single sea region with naval bombers also there. I've lost 287 convoys in 2 months for 6 German submarines sunk. The only way to bring it higher is to have 50-100 ships in a single sea region.

I'm just not sure what I am doing wrong any help would be really appreciated, I have the Expert AI mod and more division icons mods installed but no others if that makes a difference.

[Lollibast]

They can sink convoys undetected and slip away. If you get your convoy efficiency to 100% you can reduce the time between uboats engaging and your escort coming to the rescue, other than that get decent sub detection on your destroyers. One depth charge on a ship is enough imho, if they hit they kill, the trick is in finding the uboats

[Ryan]

The more convoys you have, the more escorts are required for 100% escort efficiency. You can force your convoys into certain sea zones so they are less spread out. You are going to need a lot of destroyers. I myself am just learning that you need to mass produce cheap ships. Leave most of the modules empty and specialize it as the above poster said. Max engine, one sonar, one depth charge, done.

[Bored Peon]

Convoy efficiency is based upon your escort coverage and how many convoys make the route alive.

Your escort coverage is based upon how often the ships assigned to escort in an area can visit that location.

The more groups assigned to the escort task forces increases that coverage. One group covering two sea zones should be about 50/50, two groups covering three zones should be about 80% coverage.

Your escort coverage is going to help determine if you can intercept an attack or not.

For example, if you are playing as Great Britain and you want to cover your convoys in the Mediterrean then you need to cover like 9 sea zones with escort task force groups. That means at bare minimum you should have at least 5 escort groups.

Once escort group should be somewhere between 0-4 cruisers and 5-12 destroyers and sufficient enough to deter any attacks less than a strike force. Which is something to be careful of because it is easy to lose your escort groups to strike forces.

[Lollibast]

Originally posted by Ryan:

Leave most of the modules empty and specialize it as the above poster said. Max engine, one sonar, one depth charge, done.

I also recommend radar, helps a little bit with sub detection but also surface detection. Why is that important? Your destroyers have low visibility, high speed and together with high surface detection they will be very hard for enemy patrol fleets to detect.
Due to their layout you want to avoid detection and consequently an engagement with enemy surface vessels at all cost.