'The Akula as a dueling sub in MP' LuftWolf

[Bellman]

I am sure LW wont mind me doing a little reverse engineering by posting his useful thread from CADC:-
''All Akula - The Akula as a Dueling Submarine in Multiplayer.''

''I am writing this with the idea that when one person plays as Akula, the other person will play as a Western
submarine and the game version will be DW1.03+LWAMI 3.xx with manual TMA, as I feel this is the most
interesting way to play, however, that is by no means a judgement of playing another way. I just want to limit the
scope of this tract to that of my experience. This also assumes that you have a grasp of the basics of submarine
warfare (WEPS, TMA, tactical maneovering competancy including torpedo evasion) and wish to learn how
to use the Akula as the most effective ASW weapon that it is.

The first thing to remember when facing American submarines is that unless you do some maneovering work,
you will be detected and tracked first. Unless you are sure of your acoustic position, if you can hear the American,
he has been tracking you and may have done his TMA.

With this in mind, the Akula's weapon systems have been designed with counter-shot tactics in mind, when you
perhaps only have a Torpedo-In-the-Water (TIW) call and a bearing. However, if you use your submarine
properly, you can force the American into making the choice between being an easy target for counterfire,
or risk running in a position in which you can detect him before he can detect you.

For example, the SW is rumored to be quite an undetectable opponent. However, if you ride slowly above
the layer and drag your TA under the layer, you can detect and track the SW long before he can detect you.
The Americans like to run deep, because the Squals cannot be fired under 400m and the SUBROCS become ineffective
when they have to dive deep under a layer to home on a target. with the tactic of running above the layer,
you open yourself up to three advantages: you are at missile depth, the most effective offensive posture for an
Akula; you can drag your TA under the layer, giving you a decisive detection advantage, since he cannot run
under the layer with his TA above; you force the American to come shallow above the layer, where sound travels
better, and where he can be detected at greater ranges in a more vulnerable position for your Subrocs and Squals.

Being under the layer in the intial stages of a dual is to hand every advantage to the American. Now that covers
the Akula tactic of running shallow at missile depth.

So now that you have either tracked the American running deep and have a solution on him and allowed him to
come as close as you dare (your solution should place him somewhere between 5-8nm when you fire on
a contact that has not detected you, given the margin of error) or have forced him shallow so that he fires either
at long range or after you have detected him.

The Akula's real advantage lies in the variety and number of its weapons. I believe the most important salvo
in a dual is the first, and it is also the last free shot you are going to get at missile depth, without having to come
back shallow during evasion. This is why my personal preference in maximizing the Akulas internal and external
tubes is to use the External tubes for my first shot, a mix of Squals and Subrocs, and then use the Internal tubes
for wireguided UGST (53cm) and two UUV's. The reason for this is simple. Once you fired your first shot, you have
to go deep to enter your evasion pattern and follow your target in his evasive maneovers, and in that situation,
your wireguided torpedoes, although inferior to the American ADCAP, are your only option to keep the pressure
on your target and follow up immediately if your first salvo misses. Any time you will get to come shallow to fire
missiles again, or close the distance undetected to fire Squals, is time you have had to steal by breaking contact
on your opponent, either by opening the distance or by keeping him on the run with your wireguided torpedoes.
And in that situation, you would have had time to reload, since at least a few of your torpedoes
would have ended their distance runs.

You can design your own initial shot based on your own experiences,but at minimum, you should have
a setup that can cover 1.7nm (the minium range of the squal) to 12nm for a about 20 degrees of bearing using
the six external tubes within a few minutes of being fired upon or deciding to engage a target.

After your fire your first shot, you must expect that it will miss, since your first shot will sometimes
come under less than ideal circumstances or a target expecting a large opening attack, so follow up the shot with
a UUV or two (you can place on above the layer and one under, so you can track the depth of your opponent, or you
can drop one and then drop the other on the same side of the ayer at some miles distance so you can have some
triangulation) and some wired guided torpedoes moving along the extreme bearings of your first shot
in a V. And based on the path of your weapons and sonar strength estimates, you can enable them to search a path
a few miles wide side by side at slightly offset courses. Make sure you enable your torpedoes based on your best
range estimates, so that they enable when they e about 3-4nm away from the target OR CLOSER if you have
high confidence, which you usually don't because if you did you should have killed your target.

With the first shot you should have either killed your opponent, so set him running so that he does not know you have
followed up with wireguided UGSTs or knows that he really has to clear a great deal of bearing datum given that you
have sent two torpedoes on a wide searching path. This should give you the advantage after you have cleared
your datum, since he has to clear a greater area than you do. Allowing you to safely come out of your sprint
and reestablish sonar contact with him before he comes out of his sprint and establishes sonar contact on you.
This may be another good time to fire more wireguided torpedoes at him and then move back into a clearing sprint,
since he will not get the TIW and bearing until he slows down, this may make him move back to a sprint before
resuming a track on you, and he may counterfire on the TIW bearing, a datum which you should be well on
your way to clear by now.

This is my experience the Akula as a dueling submarine in multiplayer.

Some may disagree with my usage of weapons on the basis that submarine warfare is most often seen as a
matter of precision and conservation of ordinance. However, let the American players do that and ask them not to
use their detection advantage, and only run with their TB-16 at 7kts. The Akula's advantage is weapons, and
a winning strategy ends the game with the most effective use of those weapons. Given that any given Squal
or Subroc has only a 5% chance of a kill on a first shot, it is not nearly the same as firing the same number
of wireguided torpedoes. And it is certainly nothing unheard off amongst good players in long duals to have
each fired 6-10 wireguided torpedoes at each other or more throughout the course of the dive.'' LuftWolf.
_________________

[LuftWolf]

In any case this needs some revision now that I have more experience with 1.03b!

[drEaPer]

Heya, I have a problem with an english word here: datum

I looked it up but it didnt help much. What does clear the datum mean?
Thx, and sorry for OT.

[OneShot]

Datum in this context refers to your position when you launched a weapon (or did something other non-stealthy like using radar) and thus made your position visible to the enemy - in other words the last position your enemy has seen you.

Clearing datum means that you get the hell out of that position, preferably in a way that doesn't point to you again.