Atlantic Fleet-fantastic game but are subs too powerful?

[33lima]

Yes, I think the AI is a little too aggressive, on both sides. If heavily outgunned, they should evade and run much earlier, instead of often leaving it until the first shell hits have awakened them to the cost of their terrible folly, to adapt Olivier's Crassus.

I have seen some variation, with some ships in some battles being more aggressive than others, so perhaps a mild toning down would make all the difference. Too much might break the game, in the sense it's geared towards pitching you into a battle with the minimum of preliminaries, and encounters in which the enemy immediately 'bravely ran away' are not going to be so much fun, even if more realistic.

Playing for the Kriesgmarine in the dymanic campaign, where you are the surface raider, and often outgunned or (realistically) inclined to avoid damage, the probelm I find is that even the current longer starting range option means you have very little chance of running away, bravely or otherwise.

In wargame terms, I think the chance of subs of either side encountering warships (not escorting convoys) needs greatly reduced, to reflect the reality that single subs usually only managed this when patrolling at choke points, not in open ocean, and there is almost no chance of two or three subs managing to get into a submerged ring drawn fairly tightly around a group of warships cruising nearly as fast as nearly all subs can run at max surfaced speed. Fine for a convoy, capturing the point the U-boats have hooked around the convoy on the surface and submerged ahead of its mean track, to lay their ambush. But not against a warship patrol, especially in the open ocean.

In the dynamic campaign, the underlying wargame seems to generate convoy battles with U-Boats and sometimes different units, in many turns, that don't involve the player, evidenced by the screens reporting such events. This I think, combined with the Sept 1939 start date, provides an excellent justification for the game majoring on German surface units rather than subs. And as you say, it is with these battles that Atlantic Fleet shines most brightly.

ASW for the player in particular is not good, with the deadly subs and the fact that easily the best ASW tactic is for a destroyer to fire a fan of torpedoes at a periscope depth sub. The AI seems ok with DCs and hedgehogs but yes for the player, these weapons are not so easy. This should be easier, while escorts torpedoing submerged subs should be near impossible.

As well as the super set of historical battles and the custom battle generator, I would definitely recommend trying;
1. The German dymanic campaign, which does make you feel like you are Raeder in minuature, if not perhaps Doenitz, and lacks much of the frustrations of the RN dynamic one; and
2. The static, 50-mission campaign, which I have found great fun for both sides (CA mission report here)

[Foxendown]

Great information I'll try the campaign (and thanks for the welcome back too, it's great to be back aboard).

[grenadier98]

Hi there,

I bought the steam version for PC and was also suprised by the quality of the game for the small price.

I turned on a lot of options which made the campaign more difficult, but I still won the German campaign in the first week of October 1940 and lost only 1 sub and 4 destroyers (one during a battle between my only SAG and a Britsh SAG, two sunk by British subs, one sunk by ramming from Gneisenau when she evaded British sub torpedos). So the British subs did more damage to me than all the rest of the RN...
I share your opinion regarding the sub matter. Maybe the option to sink all merchants after the escorts are sunk should only work for surface ships.
Sinking escorts is far too easy, but I think it will be hard to fix this in the game mechanics.

After my experiencs with the German campaign I think I won't play the British one focussing on defending against subs. Other than that - great game and fun.

[33lima]

You might want to try the British static campaign, rather than the dynamic, Battle of the Atlantic - I found the latter frustrating due to the sub ambushes of warships, but the former much more fun:

http://combatace.com/topic/89053-atl...-heart-of-oak/