Action in the North Atlantic
 

I recently purchased Cold Waters, and I'm currently on the mission Action in the North Atlantic commanding the Sturgeon Class Submarine. What is the best tactic used going up against the escorting warships?

1968 or 1984? In the first, literally every warship is faster than your torpedoes, and you need to bait them to run into your torpedoes at full speed and/or pincer them with two wire-guided torps. If warships arent the target I dont even bother, I alert them with a torp, go around and chase the fleeing transports.

In 1984 torps are the way, because missiles will bring ASW missiles and helicopters right on top of you. Shoot far, dogleg the torps 4-5k yds before you turn them towards the enemy and create a gap yourself by running perpendicular to the heading of the enemy at 10 knots or so. Dont use planes more than 5 degrees or you might lose a wire, especially if your torps are more than 150 degrees from your bow. Pay attention to what the enemy does immediately after your launch as many warships have towed arrays, might be stationary and listen and so might hear you launch. If they dont hear you launch, they will fire their spread and send their helicopters to wrong direction. If they obviously hear you launch, use a MOSS and again try to create separation to the location where you fired quickly and immediately give targets to your torps, as the missiles will be on their way and you may need to go flank at any time.

it it also possible to hit the warships head on as they come at me?

Yes it is, typically when they realize they are under attack all warships will immediately go flank to either evade or rush to the direction where they assume you are. You can shoot them head-on and they may not ever hear the incoming torpedo.

When being pinged by either the warships or enemy sub, what is the best tactic to evade being pinged on their sonar?

you can't avoid being pinged, all you can do is avoid being detected which occurs when the "active" sensor reading of the enemy vessel is in the 0-+10 range. I try to keep it negative.

tactics:

-keep a small profile, i.e. face your sub towards or away from the pinging escort;
-stay below the layer, either 100 feet below or as deep as possible;
-go slow.

In this mission the merchant ships always get away and I have a hard time trying to catch up to them because im so focused on avoiding the war ships.

You must plan ahead all attacks you make much more carefully because of both the reduced speed of your torpedos and - more dangerous: the reduced speed of the Sturgeon class boat compared to more modern subs. It doesn't seem much of a difference at first, but running only at 25 knots max speed will make it much harder to evade torpedos, so better be far away once your torpedos hit.

How? Use your wire and first send your torps where any snap shot from the enemy cannot harm you. If you have to evade torpedos you must do all maneuvres much earlier like changing depth, using decoys or knuckles etc.


If you find it too hard to start, then maybe start a campaign with a faster sub that can go at 30+ max speed and see the difference :yep:

Is there a good strategy for using SSGN subs (from all playable mod)? I was trying out the Ohio class and was only able to beat the first asw patrol I ran into, though I did take a hit. Second patrol came and annihilated me. I do well with SSN's but SSGN's seem to require different tactics being larger and slower and I am at a loss as to what to do. I am playing 1984 campaign.

By nature SSGNs are here to deliver the blow, not really to fight other much faster SSNs, however after hours of playing you may find that what you would consider as cons can turn pros, SSGN seems to hold very well in very deep waters and are usually quiet enough (assuming you don't make mistakes that would betray your position) to stay out of combat, in a Typhoon class or Borei, or Ohio class you wanna be the sub that sneaks by rather than the sub that targets everything that moves.
I guess mods have gave us the opportunity to play them for either the challenge of some single missions or to see how it would be to fight SSN's/SSK missions with an SSGN instead, but in the end reality is that these are two types of subs built for complete different purposes. For instance a USS Ohio class or a HMS Vanguard doesn't care about getting close to a target, it has a patrol area that is assigned and she would go to shallow water if she gets a firing order, that would mean procede to fire a Nuclear ballistic missile, neither of these would ever receive an order to chase/hunt a couple of fast subs carrying spec ops.

I see, that makes sense. Didn't really think of the limitations with the missions being handed out like I am playing an SSN (because I should be according to the logic). I like to hit random on the sub select for the campaign but this will not work if I end up with an SSGN and am getting missions like you say! I wonder if there will ever be the capability to have missions be more catered to the type of sub we are currently playing, that would be great.

SSGNs are not designed to fight other submarines and usually are escorted by more attack subs like the Akula class. Their job is to reach undetected a key position from where to fire ballistic missiles. Today its unclear if such 'missions' would be useful to any extend, so for me these are cold war tactics that don't fit in today's strategies because of lacking appropriate enemies (besides a nuclear attack would be backfiring to the aggressor in the longer term).


I have played SSNGs in the Russian mod in past game versions by editing the missions I will receive, I set a very low probability for typical attack sub missions and get a 65-85% probability for 'Navy Seals' or TLAM missions which reflect best SSGN missions. Editing some ports to be infiltrated for TLAM attacks is also possible but more complicated, although totally unreallistic: ballistic missiles can strike from far away, no need to infiltrate any port...

It would be nice to have escorts, but in this regard the game is limited. SSGNs are very noisy, they can't hide and you need to chose the runaway tactic if you encounter attack subs. At the current game state playing SSGNs isn't realistic at all - but possible.

Cool I had no idea that was possible to adjust! Which file can I edit to change the mission probabilities?