Is there an Option to remove Submarines from the game?

[Bacon]

I've been playing for a little bit, pretty much enjoy the surface ship combat, brings me back to Silent Hunter III a bit, but soon I discovered a nasty little surprise; Submarines. These things appear to be immortal, untouchable, unsinkable and super powered, sinking all 3 of my Destroyers faster than I could choke on a Cadbury milkyway. 3 Tribal-class destroyers sunk later, suitable amount of expletives later, I vow revenge, putting in 2 destroyers and my very own submarine,

After watching said destroyers and submarine be sunk within the space of a minute, I've since resigned myself to the position of wanting to remove Submarines in entirety from the game, so; I'm asking now, for the sake of my poor keyboard, is there an option to remove the submarines and their afiliated missions, from the campaign and game in entirety, due to the simply superpowered nature of just one Submarine being capable of throwing 'fun' out the fourth story window, and prompting 'agony' to become the new suitor for the experiance.

As much as I adore a bit of Battle of the Atlantic style warfare; I don't want the WW2 Equivalent of the Deathstar lurking beneath my dear Tribal-classes, and after watching my beloved Huron sink twice in a row, tends to put one off slightly.

[Bacon]

Bump because I really do want an answer.

[Killerfish Games]

There is no option to remove submarines.

However submarines should be able to be dealt with by:
- firing at their periscope to force them under (sonar will give you a solution)
- forcing them under at > 5000 yards will allow them to disengage due to poor sonar contact
- fire a torpedo spread
- aircraft if they're available

So when faced with subs we recommend:
Decide if you want to kill it or drive it off.

1) Drive it off: fire at the periscope from 5000+ yd. Big 15" HE shells work well for this too, but you won't have a suggested solution due to lack of sonar.

2) Kill it: fire a torpedo spread from 4000-5000 yards. Subs are so slow that they either have to dive (can't fire back then), or take a hit and are dead.
OR
Fire at periscope within 5000 yards to force it under, close in and depth charge/hedgehog/squid it.

Tip: always approach subs from the flanks if within 5000 yards.

With some practice subs should be easily dealt with. However like aircraft, they can still get the jump on you...

Hope this helps.

[Sentinarian]

If you can't beat them, join them. Play regular KM campaign, replay first mission until you can buy 3 type XXI subs, turn off longer deploy distances and autowin every single mission without breaking a sweat.

[bba525]

It's easy to say kill 'em or drive 'em off, but not so easy to do when the sub(s) gets its move in and torpedos and sinks both my DD's before they even get a turn.

[^Steel-Savage^]

As KF said, firing a torpedo spread at a periscope depth sub is a nearly sure-fire sub killer (though completely at odds with historical experience and practice).

It doesn't help with sub's worst characteristic, the certain hit within a range of about 2,500 yards, which if inside that range first turn is unanswerable and awful. Especially as there are way too many missions that start with an unrealistic sub 'area ambush' of fast-moving warships. What I would suggest here is making sure you have 'duds' enabled. I'm not totally sure it affects AI, but assuming it does, it will at least give you a small chance of escaping a hit within the certain hit range.

Despite the new game delaying KF's plans for some work on on AF, the latter is still crying out for such realism tweaks/rebalancing as can readily be made (ASW especially) and some additional content.

[Bacon]

Originally posted by Sentinarian:

If you can't beat them, join them. Play regular KM campaign, replay first mission until you can buy 3 type XXI subs, turn off longer deploy distances and autowin every single mission without breaking a sweat.

Would love to do that; except I earn no renown for replaying missions, thus forcing me to restart the whole campaingn every time.

[IRDCAM]

German U-Boats are 'The Battle of The Atlantic' and are an easy play, and a little more of a challenge to play against. Turn your merchants away at flank speed will disrupt torpedo calculations and limit exposure, turn your escorts into the area of the sub(s) and force them deep with gunfire initially and if you got air you are even better at keeping the U-boats down.

Playing Battle of The Atlanic as German, and 25 U-boats out there. I avoid the DD's and other escorts, sink the merchantmen, dive and disengage, pretty easy early war but the Brit escorts are getting better. Have my surface fleet up guarding approaches to Russian ports. Early on my raiders did well South Atlantic, brought them home replaced them with Type IX U-boats and am blockading Britain as well as mid Atlantic.

Submarines are what made the Battle of The Atlantic what it was, why would you not want them? Also do play Brits now and then not hard to kill the U-boats if you think about it.

[Fishing4Trains]

Originally posted by Sentinarian:

If you can't beat them, join them. Play regular KM campaign, replay first mission until you can buy 3 type XXI subs, turn off longer deploy distances and autowin every single mission without breaking a sweat.

I'm utterly bored to death with being a U-boat as so many games do this. But they can be defeated as they were in real life. Most of the tips are already here.

[Sakura Alsainn]

I mean this game is a perfect example of why only sub sims should do subs. Doesn't matter how you put it, they're overpowered.
Scare them away? On mission 6? With 5 in guns?
Or my torpedoes which... some how miss? I make a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crossfire of this ♥♥♥♥ and they missed.
Or you could depth charge them. After charging head on and getting shot in the bow.

[Max_Payne]

The area where they start is just retarded. No matter how you maneuver your cruisers subs are just gonna rape them

[The Inept European]

Yes it's the initial deployment of the subs that is problematic. It is not difficult to learn how to beat the subs if you have room to maneuver. It is very difficult to avoid taking losses when they open the engagement already within lethal range of many of your ships. Often the best you can do is sacrifice destroyers to try to save capital ships.

The game option that helps most is probably "Begin engagements at longer ranges". Even this does not seem to totally prevent close range sub ambushes.

Apart from that I recommend practicing destroyer vs sub tactics in the 1 on 1 missions or custom missions (2 destroyers vs 1 sub, 2 destroyers vs 2 subs) until you get it down pat. Subs are pretty weak except when they get you by surprise - which is entirely realistic.

Here is a cheat, a trick basically, to deal with subs. Get to within 4500 yards or whatever the 1 turn run distance of your surface vessel torps is (different for RN vs KM). Select the target sub. Go underwater. You can actually see the sub. Fire a 3 torp burst. Put one on the conning tower, one on the bow, one on the stern. Unless the sub is moving 90 degrees parallel at flank speed you should get one hit from this. Usually you can just put one on the bow, and repeat this 1-2 times until you hit. Simples.

While attacking the sub in this way, if you stay outside half the distance of his torps movement in one turn, you can evade the torp on your move, by turning outside the torp 90 degrees. You must always run at flank speed (ALL vessels must go to flank speed as soon as subs are detected) .

The only time a sub is dangerous is when it can fire a spread, which it can really only do once. When it fires a spread you have to evade. Either turn and run or if you are a brave destroyer captain, try to pass between the tracks. This requires an intimate knowledge of the turning arc of your ship at different speeds, and is another major reason why you must practice, practice, practice in single missions or in custom missions. Once the sub has fired its spread, it will almost always fire only single torps which you can pretty easily dodge. You can also use the tactic above of using gunfire to force it below torpedo depth, but the drawback of this is that the sub often disengages if slightly damaged (and more or less teleports out of your grasp).

Using these tactics I quickly found that killing the sub with a torp was just too easy, so instead I elected to close to close range and kill with depth charges, which is more 'sporting' and more realistic (relatively few subs were ever killed by torpedoes from surface ships and the game makes this way too easy). I also started prosecuting subs with corvettes rather than destroyers (slower and they usually - by definition? have no torps).

[the evil one]

Originally posted by hotspur59:

Originally posted by Sentinarian:

If you can't beat them, join them. Play regular KM campaign, replay first mission until you can buy 3 type XXI subs, turn off longer deploy distances and autowin every single mission without breaking a sweat.

I'm utterly bored to death with being a U-boat as so many games do this. But they can be defeated as they were in real life. Most of the tips are already here.

this is the point, the uboat spam is just boring its not about being hard to beat them or not
its the constant spam of boring sub attacks, its a game not a sim and if its not fun whats the point of it

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by the evil one:

Originally posted by hotspur59:

.. they can be defeated as they were in real life. Most of the tips are already here.

this is the point, the uboat spam is just boring its not about being hard to beat them or not
its the constant spam of boring sub attacks, its a game not a sim and if its not fun whats the point of it

I think this is a fair point yes. It's highly repetitive and boring, just become boring fighting the same tactical situation again and again. The tactical situation is always a perfect U-boat ambush, it almost never resembles the typical BotA historical tactical situations which were long drawn out cat and mouse games, dances, even if they might start with one or two merchants being ambushed. The typical scenario in AF is a close range ambush of a capital ship group surrounded by a ring of subs (how?!) in home waters with precious little air support. It's not just frustrating but totally wrong.

The capital ship group is always densely packed making it very hard to evade even torpedo misses from other targets. And if the game happens to place the escorts on the right of the capital ships and the subs on the left, you're screwed. In that situation I usually just crash the game and restart to get a more viable opening position.

The game makes subs overpowered and over aggressive. Even then their tactics don't reflect their weaknesses in the game. They are far too aggressive and basically follow mass suicide tactics.