Which is why I said “competent”.
Though I’m still confused how people play PBY without scoring multiple kills per match. The thing is hilariously easy to use.
I have only one question how is the damage model of sub?
The DMs are ship-level, the problem is that anti-sub weapons feel a bit not quite there
Sunderland has Sub hunting Radar and there were a few German Naval recon/Sub hunt versions of the Fw-200 and Ju-88
the americans had modified PBM Mariner’s for Sub hunting too
they either one hit or do nothing
imo subs would balance very well in Naval RB/EC
at the BR 3.7 it’s currently at the Typ VIIc/41 would be pretty well countered but at higher BRs like 6.0-7.0 you would have to really go stealth and hunt Battleships which I’d actually prefer to being with Boats
3 Likes
yeah EC has so much potential for subs
Edit: I would love if they added missions in EC just for subs, like sneak into a port and sink ships
2 Likes
+1 I just hope they figure something better out with spotting, 10kph is going to be horrendous trying to even intercept a battleship with since there’s not a chance you could survive within 10km of one surfaced
I like the hydrophone mechanic tbh, being slow AF in the debths is just part of being a Sub and I like it that way
later subs would change that tho
It would be complete rubbish in hi tier battles - it works here because it is an event set up specifically to be reasonable and in a historical context - remove that and it is nonsense.
1 Like
you say that but in EC submarines would be good fun, sure slow but still fun, and of course outside the event it would be bad, most maps are super shallow and the mode is horrid by itself
you’d have to spawn the subs far out in the open, a combined surface until you’re close enough and then dive to the target tactic like they actually used would be required but they’d still be fine imo
You are totally right, it’s impossible to play U-boat. How can you lsuch a non balanced event ! Need to play only once to understand that is horrible. Nevertheless, its really fun to play U-boat but you need to review the boats and the catalina. I confirm this plane is fucking op and eatch time it’s a hit 😤😤
This has been a pretty fun mode. I think both sides are rather well balanced now. I do think that it is rather arcadey, since subs can pop up and submerge within seconds, but it works pretty well. My first concern are the submarine detection mechanics, which could probably be more sophisticated, and my second concern is that if submarines are added into the game, I expect there will be some early cold war subs (Whiskey, Tang), and with that, some torpedoes that are currently in the game (SET-40, SET-65) should get their guidance systems. This does assume that Gaijin will add them in, but considering no event goes without purpose, I am assuming this is the case.
As far as a submarine mode goes, this is an okay start, however, there are 4 changes that I’d say absolutely need to be implemented before submarines are added properly (these changes would work best for RB, although there’s nothing to say they won’t work for AB or SB). Listing them from most most important to least most important they are:
1) Passive sonar/sensors
Currently surface vessel sensors are modelled in a way that makes counter-play on the part of a submarine basically impossible, the best (and frankly only) way to avoid detection is to sit at 54 meters and crawl forwards at 1-2km/h, and even then, it is not fool-proof.
Instead of guaranteeing detection if you’re close enough, vessels would have to slow right down to achieve maximum effectiveness with their passive sonars. At a slow speed these would have a much better chance at accurately disseminating the range, bearing, course, and speed of enemy vessels, whilst also making your vessel harder to detect with passive sonar. Conversely, the faster your vessel goes, the less accurate your sensors become as the sound of water rushing past them begins to drown out the noises made by enemy vessels, as well as making your vessel easier to detect because it’s making more noise. Go too fast and your sensors may even start feeding you false information such as incorrect courses, ranges, and speeds (the bearing however would remain the same). Go too fast and the sensors may lose the contact altogether.
This would deny surface vessels the ability to simply charge at submarines, it would also give submarines options, such as first moving slowly in order to ascertain whether or not a surface vessel is likely to be detecting them, and then acting accordingly. Laying traps or making an escape are just two potential actions a submarine could take at this point.
EDIT: Personally, I’d just straight up scrap a guaranteed detection range, players should have to actively rely on and utilise their sensors instead of going “well I know the submarine is in the point so if I just go around in circles, the game will just tell me where they are”. A submarine doing everything correctly should be allowed to stay hidden.
2) Active sonars/sensors
While I’m not 100% on this, it seems that currently, surface vessels permanently utilise active sensors at essentially zero risk to them. This is not only un-realistic, but even worse, this serves no gameplay function.
Instead of vessels constantly banging away on active sonar, they should be toggled on and off by the player.
The benefits of activating active sonar would be that your vessel would be able to detect enemy vessels and their specifics much more easily and potentially at greater ranges.
The downsides of activating active sonar would be that your vessel is made much easier to detect, thus giving away your position, heading, course, and bearing to enemy vessels.
This would give vessels a risk/reward dynamic between quicker kills but making them easier targets, or taking more time on kills but putting themselves at far less risk of being sunk.
3) Baffles
As far as I can tell, baffles are just straight up not in the game. Meaning that there is basically nowhere a submarine can hide.
Baffles are essentially a sonar dead-zone/blind-spot where vessels can very easily hide. They are caused by the need to isolate machinery in the rear of the vessel from the delicate sensors in the front of the vessels.
This means that sensors can actually hear stuff around them, instead of engine noise that would drown out any other sound.
This also means that sensors would have a dead-zone in the shape of an expanding cone behind them where they’d be useless. (Unless they have a towed sonar array, but those are quite modern for ww2, and they already require vessels to move slowly, lest they get damaged from the drag produced by the water).
This would give submarines the potential to escape a surface vessel and even launch against one undetected, however, this would also give surface vessels the ability to stalk submarines and fire upon them without the submarine even realising they’re being hunted until it’s too late.
4) Thermoclines
As far as I can tell, thermoclines are implemented… kinda. From what I’ve been told, the sensors of surface vessels are useless against targets below 60 meters. This would give submarines options for counter-play if they didn’t suddenly start taking damage below 55 meters.
Instead of a safe zone in the crush depth, there would be a gameplay mechanic at a useable depth.
A thermocline is a sudden and distinct change in water temperature at a depth.
Thermoclines influence how sound travels.
Say a surface vessel is using an active sonar and a ping hits a thermocline. At a shallow angle, the ping would be reflected, bouncing along the top of the thermocline, extending the range of the sonar, but drastically limiting its depth. At a steep angle, the ping would go through the thermocline, but in the process be refracted slightly downwards.
The depth these occur at are influenced by a multitude of things such as the time of day, or the weather. For example, a sunny day on a calm sea would have a deep and strong thermocline, a cloudy day on a rough sea would have shallow and weak thermocline, and a storm at night would potentially have no thermocline whatsoever.
This would allow maps to dynamically effect gameplay, introducing a double edged sword. The presence of a thermocline would create a sonar “shadow zone” between the angle of reflection and refraction which would make submarines much harder to detect, a thermocline would help mask the movement of a submarine allowing it to move faster, with rare strong ones allowing them to launch torpedoes or mines without detection provided they are at a certain depth, but also giving away such launches at much further ranges if the submarine is at a shallow depth, as the sound of the launch is reflected along the thermocline.
In summary, I think submarines have great promise in warthunder, but there are aspect of gameplay, some quite intrinsic to the mode that I feel ABSOLUTELY MUST be addressed before submarines are given a full release.
TLDR: mode kinda meh, boats need reason to go slow, ping noise need gameplay with it, submarines need escape options, water needs to mess with sound.
10 Likes
I played all night yesterday and both sides have been a blast! Both sides feel a little too easy once you get the hang of things, especially as the submarines though I see a lot of people struggling to understand them. I’ll try to collect my experiences with each side below:
Escorts: This feels pretty solid as-is. Especially since you added the remaining ship and time counter at the top. I tend to spawn in on whichever side is less populated by my team, steam to the front of the convoy, and then cut back in towards the submarine spawn. Doing this typically nets even the sneaky ones. The sonar return mechanic is fun to watch on the map. Especially knowing it might not be all the subs out there is someone is trying to go low and slow. I would like some incentive to go slow when trying to detect. Going flank speed should make it all but impossible to detect subs unless they’re basically right under the hull. Overall though, I love the process of hammering a sub just below the surface with HE to keep them underwater while I close trying to evade torpedoes and mines. I will say that the mines should probably have some kind of arming timer. The fact they can just pop up and immediately detonate makes that ideal run from stern to bow a foolish thing to try. At the same time, without additional tools like noisemakers, subs don’t really have much realistic counter-play available to them once you’re that close. The PBYs spotting ability is second only to the 500 lb bomb insta-killing any sub still near the surface. Never thought I’d see the day when a Catalina could strike fear into the hearts of other players.
Submarines: While definitely in need of work, I like what I see so far. The restricted torpedo range means I need to take some time traveling, representing a window of vulnerability to be exploited by bombers and DDs. The crush depth being only 60 meters is a little weird but these missions are so short and depth charges don’t have depth settings so again it makes sense here. I haven’t had any issues winning almost every match though and I’m not a fan of what I’ve found to work with a high degree of reliability. After spawning, I drop to 5 meters depth. Any lower takes me to the underwater view and massively slows me down. Any higher and I can be easily spotted/damaged by HE from DDs. This lets me turn ahead of the convoy and speed along at 40 kph with no real resistance in order to work my way through as many ships as I can until someone finally notices that 8 or 9 convoy vessels are gone. And when a destroyer does come? They don’t present any serious threat. I’m not saying this to brag, I mean that there is essentially nothing they can do if you play it right. If I can, I’ll turn and box them in with torpedoes. If I can’t do that, I’ll pop out mines to catch them. If they somehow get through all of that, no problem. Just surface behind them and knock out their rear guns with your 37mm cannon. When they turn around to bring the front guns to bear, I just dive and repeat the process until the DD dies. Without a couple DDs working together, the rate of submarine ascent/descent presents an absurd advantage that has me feeling more like the Viet Cong emerging from random tunnels than a panicked submarine captain surrounded by these supposedly deadly ships.
Conclusion recommendations:
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Destroyers should not be able to passively detect submarines when going at high speeds in the water. Sonar should be inhibited by this as well.
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Submarines need a reduction in surface speed. Or at least should not be able to benefit from it when below 2 or 3 meters. This would at least expose enough structure to make such behavior a serious risk.
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For future events like this, please make the spawns evenly split spawning destroyers. If there are 8 destroyers and 4 spawn north, then that spawn should be unusable to the remaining 4 players until after their first death. This should help to ensure the convoy could at least theoretically be defended from both sides.
I love the event. Seriously, this is awesome. Having a realistic objective that isn’t just shoot each other in random location has been a blast. This is what War Thunder should be trying to bring to the table everywhere, not just an event.
4 Likes
Honestly, I agree with what the guy above me said. One thing to add is I believe the cargo ships should give a little more score to the player, as the only real way to grind mission score is to go after player ships and not the actual objective. This could honestly just be done in a quick hotfix, because killing the cargo ships rewards basically nothing
2 Likes
This is the biggest criticisms of the community. I know it’s only been a day but it would be nice if the suggestions could be implemented before it ends in a week.
I was reminded of the time when I was playing Silent Hunter III passionately. Back then, I wanted to play a realistic submarine game online, and now it is becoming a reality.
I think the game will become more interesting by making it a crisis and a chance for the submarine when the destroyer drops depth charges. The shock wave of the depth charges may destroy the active sonar and passive sonar, so the destroyer has to stop the sonar. The destroyer itself also has to leave the spot quickly before the depth charges explode to avoid self-damage. The explosion of the depth charges creates a lot of bubbles and noise in the water, and the sonar becomes useless for a while. During that time, the submarine can seize the chance to escape.
I for one look forward to experiencing submarine warfare in the Pacific theater in the future.
1 Like
Just a heads up to whoever cooked this up, my compliments to the chef ! PLEASE add subs to naval immediately. Also, after playing it for a bit, suggest all take your screen shot of submarine controls and post on your desktop. (GOTO) Controls, then Submarine but make one minor change, change MOUSE WHEEL select to Depth Control. Now when playing you move mouse wheel up/down to raise/lower your depth. GL HF o7 //white_3t