Disclaimer: This is an idea on how to integrate submarines into the gameloop and not how submarines as a feature should work.
This suggestion tied to this post about the implementation of aircraft carriers, please be sure to look into it for a complete picture.
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Yes
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No
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Yes, submarines should be locked in BRs where there are adequate counters for them.
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No, I want to play submarines in all BRs regardless of balance.
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Don’t want this suggestion to be implemented at all.
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4.7
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5.0 (This suggestion’s recommendation!)
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5.3
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Other (please comment as to which you’d prefer!)
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Don’t want this suggestion to be implemented at all.
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Early Game (Refer to CAS in Ground RB)
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Mid Game
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Late Game (Refer to Nuclear Bombers in Ground RB)
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Don’t want this suggestion to be implemented at all.
Premise
With the Battle of the Atlantic Event having come and gone, we can safely assume that Gaijin is deeply considering on how to add submarines to Naval. Prior to this event, I already have given my misgivings about the implementation of submarines; to those who missed it, here’s a brief rundown:
Submarines as tech tree vehicles are in a predicament where their effectiveness is exponentially greater the higher BR you go. In the lower BRs, the motor boats and destroyers are nimble and are armed with depth charges. Inversely, battleships tend to be sitting ducks in terms of mobility and they lack depth charges to counter the threat.
While the Battle of the Atlantic Event resulted in overwhelming ship victory, this cannot be interpreted as a realistic situation in a Naval match due to several reasons:
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the submarines are the sole focus of that particular event without other surface vessels to draw fire away until eventually the destroyers are sitting on top of the submarine spawn.
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they are facing destroyers and frigates, something I’ve already addressed as counters to submarine warfare and therefore can’t be extrapolated as submarines are inherently weak against all ship encounters.
So the implied solution for higher BR would be to deploy destroyers in higher BR to perform escort duties for the team, as was done in real life. However, this solution relies on an assumption that simply will not translate gameplay-wise to War Thunder. For one, it hinges on teamwork from the player base, which will never realistically happen consistently among strangers. And the other - the bigger - issue is that the current gameplay loop for Naval simply doesn’t permit the survivability of lighter weight classes when heavy hitters are present. Showing up as a destroyer in a match with battleships will mean instant death the moment you are seen. To experience this first hand, look into the Arcade battle at 6.0 and watch the destroyers get wiped out in a volley. Whether it’s controlled by a bot or not is beyond the point. World of Warships may have allowed this sort of gameplay loop but WoWs is much more arcadey game with visibility mechanics, something that is antithesis to War Thunder’s game style and therefore not comparable.
The Idea
As a solution to this, I propose that submarines to be match-exclusive vehicles, much like how attack drones are currently implemented in high-tier Ground RB. This means the only way to have access to them is to have enough spawn points from battle contributions to spawn in one.
For optimum gameplay balance to address the problems listed above, submarines will have mutually exclusive BR ranges; meaning that above and below this range, they wouldn’t be an option to spawn. This BR range would be determined by what can adequately counter the options. In my opinion, submarines would be spawnable at BR 2.3 (to avoid Reserves getting targeted) up until 4.7, as the cruisers in that range have depth charges.
Tradeoffs
Pro:
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Subs are locked in BRs that they can be adequately defended against.
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As its locked behind (presumably pretty high) spawn points, you wouldn’t have matches filled with them, especially not at the start of the game.
Cons:
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The biggest con is probably that the choice of vehicles to play is out of your hands. The selection avaliable will probably be the kinds of vehicle that is representative of your nation; so for submarines it’d be like Type VII U-boats for Germany, Gato-class for the Americans, etc. etc.
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As it is a spawn point based system, by the time you can spawn one, the match might have progressed to the point where you can’t make any meaningful contribution with it.
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- As submarines are naturally slow vehicles when underwater, this means getting into engagement range would take longer than the remaining amount of time, especially if you don’t want enemies to swarm your spawn as was the case for the Event. Although this is slightly countered by the fact that the lower BR maps tend to be small.