Are you a good sub captain?
 

I read an interesting stat from a book excerpt, Submarine Technology for the 21st Century by Stan Zimmerman,

Are you a good sub captain or do you belong in port at a desk job? Be truthful now...I have to admit though I end up on the sea bottom most of the time... and its always those darn pesky helos that do it too!

I think I'm a pretty good skipper, but I'm a bit reckless at times.

Let's just say that I do a lot of questionable actions. :hmm:

I'm awful. I don't know my ASW from my elbow. :( I'm trying but i'm still dying. :)

Never mind Manouevres, always go straight at 'em!" - Jack Aubrey.

A tactical theory based on the assumption that Englishmen can always fire twice as fast as Frenchmen.

I doubt that historical success rates for submarine captains are accurate predictors of future success rates. Submarines, their weaponry, and sonars were so crude then.

Helos are definitely my biggest problem as well.

Bernard is on my boat. 'nuff said.

And usually in the form of escaping launch datums I would guess, if your problem is similar to mine. A slowing moving platform against fast moving hunters...:cry:

....I just finished modding a version of the sublaunched AIM-9X (from the TASM and SS27ASW) into the game. We'll see whether or not it increases my survival stats against those helos.

Still, its a poignant reminder that not all captains are created equally... and the top notch of a lot can produce starkingly different results than their less competant peers.

I wouldnt say im a good skipper infact even though i voted yes im more at home commanding boomers than attacks, i excell in navigation, my worst points are acctualy tactical awareness and understanding what the other guy is doing or going to do.

There fore im more at home on boomers but all the time untill now i find myself commanding attack boats, even though im pretty good im in no way top of the class infact theres so many people above me.

What does it mean 'to excel in navigation' ? You need very little navigation skills in DW scenarios.

Part of the problem is solved by moving faster as soon as you launch an ASCM. Once you shoot a cruise missile, they know EXACTLY where you are, so you need to really step out to get away from that point.

The helos actually don't search that smartly. They set up a box around the datum and the area doesn't expand so if you can basically just get a little bit outside of the box, you're home free. As long as you're not overflown, in which case he gets a MAD hit, you should be okay.

I also think it's odd how people use cruise missiles from insanely close distances. Why the heck do people shoot missiles that have a range of tens if not hundreds of miles, at single digit ranges? It makes no sense. Standing off and shooting decreases your vulnerability to counter attack from ASW aircraft by giving you plenty of time to clear the datum. In order to make the weapons effective you shoot lots of them in a salvo. Yeah, sometimes they get shot down... but not all the time and it usually only takes 1 or 2 to put a ship out of action. That's good enough for me.

I suspect a lot of it is luck too. So much of the outcome of submarine attacks has to do with one's ability to get into a good position to shoot. That's stuff you can't always control.

I wouldn't say that. It doesn't hurt to have some basic mo'board skills in DW. It's not really necessary, but I'd argue it lets you drive a little smarter, although it makes you a lot more busy.

What mod are you playing with which enables you to play with boomers...or are you talking SCU?

Yeah SCU for the boomers trying to make that playable ohio to work now id like to give that one a spin!

And navigational skill come in very handy in MP games knowing where you are and about the area your in gives you a big advantage where as the guy who dont know the area will probably ground or something.

To cause more fire damage from all the onboard jet fuel. Kidding.

It's because of the balance of effectiveness between SSMs and SAMs in DW. The only effective SSM carried by player controlled platforms in DW is the Klub. Any other missile type is going to be shot down unless it is fired in such large numbers that it can overwhelm the defenses of the target formation. Even a full salvo of 12 TASMs is unlikely to sink even one ship in a Russian SAG if fired at long range. From close range, you 've got a realistic chance at killing one and a shot at damaging or sinking a second, or maybe even a shot at a HVT.

I disagree that a chance at sinking a screening vessel is worth depleting stores (or more accurately, worth sacrificing limited stores space that could be used for more effective weapons) or revealing the sub's location. Sure, you'll probably get away in time, but so will the enemy formation. As it stands now, an SSN can get within lethal ADCAP/UGST/65-76 range of the HVT in most formations--including well-screened formations. (Although, it should be noted here that Lw/Ami 4 decreases the effective range of these weapons significantly, and will likely have the effect of making well-defended HVT's much harder to reach. :|\\) Firing at long range eliminates your best chance at an effective attack.

Now, if subsonic, seaskimming missiles performed in DW the way they did in the Falklands, Persian Gulf, and off the coast of Lebanon just a few months ago, then you'd be absolutely right. But as it stands now, the ability of escort vessels (or hell, even capital ships with only point defenses like LSD's and CVN's) to detect, identify, and engage SSMs in DW renders the subsonic SSM all but useless unless they are fired from inside the escorts' engagement envelope.

The Klub, of course, can be a whole different story. It actually loses effectiveness (against a player-controlled FFG) if it is fired close enough that it can be detected in the boost phase. Even so, when up against a Burke or Tico, firing from close range is often the only way for the missiles to get through (LW/Ami mod applied of course, since those vessels are ineffective as a counter-unit in stock DW).

If your close enough to fire missiles that wont get shot down (20nm) why dont you just fire two torps into a target? it takes longer to get there but gives you a chance to get out before a helo comes and sits on you.

depending on what sort of target im firing against i will use a veriaty of ranges and weapons, for a nimitz stand alone i would get close and fire two klubs and two torpedos, the missiles will be there to distract the enamy.

If im engauging a CVBG i will sit deep and let the forward escorts go over me then attack and slip away because i know that any helo or weapon fired into the middle of the CVBG will be easier to evade because theres so much noise the enamy cant get a true fix on me.
And if they do fire a torp all i have to do is go under a ship and blow then dive again most likely the enamys torp will hit thier own ship.

Agreed. I only think the missiles are worth firing if you've been detected and have nothing to lose, or if you really, really, need a certain ship dead NOW. As a general rule, torps are effective, and subsonic SSMs are not.

So, this poll all but confirms that %52 of us are complete liars. :lol: ;)

That hasn't been my experience. Plus, a full salvo of TASMS isn't 12 missiles, it's 16 missiles. Lemme tell ya, those 4 in the torpedo tubes sometimes make all the difference. If you figure individually, a TASM has only as say a 0.10 Phit, then those four missiles mean the difference between having only a 0.72 probability of scoring at least one hit, and having a 0.81 probability of scoring at least one hit. The one is sorta sketchy performance, the other is actually pretty good, all things considered. My suspicion is, though, that due to factors like the lack of available director radars and what not which limit the number of targets that can be engaged simultaneously, the performance is actually considerably higher the bigger your salvo size is.

That's the thing, if you shoot them from far enough away then they don't reveal the sub's location because you have enough time to be someplace completely different by the time a searcher gets to them. Additionally, if you shoot them from beyond the target's radar horizon, then he doesn't even know WHERE you are at all. He only knows your direction.

Even if, say the target did detect the launch. If you figure you shot your TASMS at 200Nmi using over the horizon firing data, then by the time a helo gets to where you are, you're about an hour's drive away. At 15kts, that's 707 Nmi^2 that the searcher would have to look through in order to find you. If you figure a helo has a search width of about 2Nmi then at 200kts, it'd take him an hour and a half to stand a 50% chance to find you, just if you stood still! Of course, I wouldn't stay still. I'd be doing my best to make that 707 Nmi^2 even BIGGER.

I haven't experienced that. What usually happens with me, is that I end up taking out one of the escorts with TASMs, close occaisionally get an escort with Harpoons, and then finish of the HVUs with torpedoes. To do it, you need to make full use of the over the horizon data, though.

That's true.

The corvette off Lebanon had his CIWS turned off. :-)

If you look at the statistics (this is off the top of my head), ASCMs have a single shot Phit on average of about 0.60 against undefended targets (tankers and merchant vessels) and about 0.25 against defended vessels. It's really surprising how many of them miss. Of those which were hit, most of the warships were not sunk. The merchant vessels typically were sunk unless they had effective damage control to prevent fires from spreading. There was a guy who wrote this giant book about the Tanker Wars in the gulf, compiling as many numbers as he could about cruise missile attacks and the results were really interesting. Individually, they're really not that effective against warships, their real power is in firing salvos of 2 or preferably many more. Cruise missiles are best thought of as robotic kamakazee planes. They are supposed to dive en masse into enemy air defenses, with the full knowledge that most of them will be shot down before they even got close, but that one or two that gets through is potentially devastating.

The corvette off Lebanon probably would have survived an attack of only 2 ASCMs fired in salvo had he had his CIWS turned on.

Most ASCMs are really not that great singly. I'd want to shoot at least 2 and preferably more if possible. That makes sense if you think about it. They probably don't have the best radars in the world on them. They don't have a lot of room on them for fancy computers, and all of that costs money. You don't want to put the most sophisticated electronics in the world in something that is supposed to explode. That means they're vulnerable to countermeasures. They spend a lot of time in a box at sea, so they get a lot of wear and tear. They tend to be designed for use in idealized environments, but used in less than ideal environments, that almost certainly has it's effect.

That hasn't been my experience. My sense of things is that the typical player shoots them one at a time, or maybe only a few at at time. They're too worried about conserving missiles. If you follow the logic of Fleet Tactics, though, the proper thing to do is always shoot your maximum salvo size (16 missiles, not 12) into the opposing formation. I mean... geez... if I was commanding an SSN and I got a message that a Russian amphibious force was entering the Barents Sea, bound for Iceland, and it was located at XX-XX N, YY-YY E at TTTTZ hours, heading 000T at VVkts. I wouldn't be chinsy about missiles. I'd shoot everything I had at them at soon as I could. The whole battle isn't won at 200Nmi but just by taking the shot you've already siezed a tremendous advantage. I'd be happy just to take out one of the escorts in the opening salvo because I'd have another salvo of Harpoons ready when I got in range, and then finally I'd have my torpedoes to attack a force that's already been attrited. Any ship I take out makes the next salvo's chances a little bit better.

ASCM attacks, fought in the manner are time consuming affairs because you spend a lot of time making guestimates of where the target is, based on a recent but old piece of intelligence, firing into the AOU produced by that intelligence, hoping for the best then closing, making another guestimate when you get in range, then finally finding out what you have left HOURS later. Sometimes I think players don't game it this way, though, because it is so time consuming.

Played two missions today, the same mission twice... and died on both of them without even reaching my objective... man I stink. :( :cry:. The first time was from another pesky ASW helo, the second by a 688i's (mark48) that I never even got a wiff of despite going slowly at 5 knots....:dead:

If a cat needs 9 lives... I need about 143 lives... and still some.

Actually I stopped using ASCMs for reasons already mentioned. Its usually the datum of a torpedo strike that gets me and from helo's already in the air for ASW screen ( though I don't know how realistic it is to have omnipresent ASW helos everywhere all the time... still makes the missions more challenging... more realistic? Who knows...). no matter how slow, deep, or far I launch torps they are almost always detected instantly (I guess they are pretty noisey) and a helo is bearing down the datum within 3mins of launch... :(

Agreed.... I should have mentioned that playing with truth on doesn't count;)

Okay, so we'll assume that the skipper in these scenarios carried TASMs or 'poons in stores and has the luxury of not needing the tubes for ADCAPs and UUVs. Yes, the extra 4 missiles does make a difference. Of course, for the Seawolf, a "full" salvo is only 8 missiles, which also makes a difference.

I just ran two tests, and got the results I expected. A single escort (Udaloy) was able to shoot down 10 missiles on its own in the first test. A single escort (Sovremmenyy) got 8 or 9 on its own on the second test, while 1-2 were shot down by a supporting warship which engaged after the Sov had fired 3 volleys already (for again, a total of 10 shootdowns). Both formations were loose ASW-optimized formations; for a tight AAW-optimized formation, the role of mutual support will be much more salient. In both tests, all missiles left over after the first ship was sunk that did not impact the hull were shot down by the next possible target (some were also spoofed by chaff).

I'm comfortable saying that a Seawolf would be lucky to get anyone, while a 688I will reliably get one escort provided that the formation provides little to no mutual AAW support and the 688I uses the torp tubes along with the VLS. If those conditions aren't true, it might not even get the one. Splitting the missiles between two targets would result in all of the missiles being shot down in nearly all cases, even with the factors above being in the SSN's favor.


Okay, I shouldn't have said "location," but "presence." The formation can now alter course to avoid you, to prevent a more effective torpedo attack. Also, this is probably the best point to throw in that we seem to be looking at slightly different situations. The scenario I envision is not one in which you have over the horizon targeting data, but a long-range TA solution. Thus, there is a strong possibility that the missile lauch will be detected by ASW escorts or aircraft (especially with the launch transient noise modeled in LW/Ami). In fact, in one of my tests, I was 6nm off the nose of a Su-33 at the time of launch--fortunately, the DW visual "sensor" doesn't have realistic performance in that regard.

Yeah, if this is OTH, you're getting away unless you were unlucky enough to have an SSN or MPA on your doorstep without knowing it, (and more on this later...)

You're mostly right here. I'm making the error of imputing realistic AI performance. The only way that my argument here plays out is in the rare case of a player-led formation, which we aren't likely to see opposing a US sub frequently unless we get an OPFOR expansion pack. (Russian SSNs vs. US formations are outside this discussion because the Klub is quite effective.)


So did the Stark. And both the Stark and Sheffield detected the incoming with lookouts instead of radar. The reason why the tin cans have been sucking is because of a failure to detect, identify, and engage the incoming missiles. This difficulty is not factored into DW.

If malfunctions were modled, then it would be even more important to prevent the missiles from being shot down. This strengthens my argument...

In DW, more so than in real life, saturation is essential because the ships' defenses are so capable. I don't see how this bears on the issue of range of engagement, though.

I thought you stayed away from MP?
Sorry, but the only players who hold back and only fire a few at a time are Kilo or Akula drivers that want to give the guy in the FFG a break. (Or, they're shooting at targets with no missile defenses.) There is no need for such chivalry if you're shooting Harpoons or TASMs. Plus, players have no reason to be concerned with conserving stores since the sub's "deployment" ends at the end of the mission. Even in the so-called "campaign" mode, loadouts can be refreshed between missions regardless of whether the sub had a chance to return to port.

An OTH shot makes sense, especially from that kind of range. You'll get one escort "for free." However, that range scale takes this completely out of the scope of MP, and out of the scope of most SP scenarios, so criticism of players for not doing this is of limited applicability.

And you're not taking out an escort with a 4-Harpoon salvo at long range. Even the ASW-oriented Udaloy will get around 10. Even if you're lucky enough to get a single hit, you're only going to score around 33-50% damage. (Just tested---37% on a Udaloy, which I'll add was the end result of an 8-missile salvo fired from 10 miles and enabled 5 miles out! Aside: Just for the heck of it, I redid the same test from 6.5nm, scoring 3 hits for a kill.)

Scenario designers don't build 200nm engagements because it's too time consuming for the player. In your more typical scenario without OTH targeting, it makes more sense to close from 30-40nm to <10nm to use your missiles (assuming you use them at all) than to fire immediately.

[/dream mode on]Now, if we had a dynamic campaign engine that could place these engagements in the scope of a broader conflict, with the ability to jump into any controllable platform within the conflict and MP capacity, then I would love jump into an SSN that had just been referred to an SAG or CSG, fire the missiles, set course to clear datum and intercept, go do something else (jump to another platform, else go to a time lapse faster than 8x), come back to the SSN if it was intercepted en route, and then play the interesting part that involves actually penetrating the ASW screen (in which human opponents are controlling the escorts and helos) and doing some REAL damage. But that's a lot of trouble to go through to get to the fun part if I don't have, at least, a more concrete reason to do it. (For example, preventing the target formation from accomplishing its mission in the conflict and tilting the order of battle to my side). [/dream mode off]