A new look at Sonar

[Iron Ranger]

While messing with the 41 campaign and attempting to balance it, I was thinking on the battle of the Alantic, and how to set this up. You can't; subs are poor units for two reasons.

Low dive numbers - 25% at the start + 5% per level

Spoting - Your getting 100% intel no matter the distance you are from the unit

But what good is Sonar - what does it do? Sonar will incress the ND of BC,BB,CV units by one for each level, when they are attacked by subs.

This doesn't sound too good when Gun Laying Radar (GR) will incress the NA,ND and Str point by one for each level (BB&BC). In otherwords Sonar only helps one small area while GR helps in the same area and several more for the same price, only the CVs gain something 'extra' with sonar.

But lets say we change two items (or leave as is and just used this approach)

1) Sub Dive starts at 50% and incress 5% per level (max 75%). Now these guys would be very hard to kill and could cause some real problems while raiding.

2) Spoting is changed to a decressing % for each hex. 1-2 hexs 100%, 3 hexs 90%, 4 hexs 80% ect... This means at the 4-5 hexs you will spot subs with the bombers the odds of really 'spotting' him will be around 80-70%. You'll need to send you ships in a 'net' pattern to really find the sub.

And this is were Sonar would come in. If a 'searhing' ship hits a sub its a surprise event and the sub is 'attacking' and the ship is 'defending'. Sub is attacking so no dive. This ship will take heavy damage but unlikly to sink unless unlucky and the tech level of the sub is very high (4-5). But the ship since its defending gets to apply both its GR level AND the sonar level to its ND value - you would sink the sub with only this one 'hit' if the levels are high enough.

EXP: BBs ND value starts at 3 - GR L3 makes it 6 - Sonar L3 makes it 9. With alittle luck (+1), Exp and good supply you could be looking at 12 pts of damage to the 'attacking' sub. Ouch - down she goes, never to rise again.

This of course will never happen as the two weakness's of the sub will never change, patch 1.08? Understandable a 'foolish' subject but I just couldn't 'think' this up and not post about it. Sorry if this has been covered before.....

[pzgndr]

But what good is Sonar - what does it do?

One way to determine the value of a thing is to see what happens without it. I tried this with the Campaign mods by reducing UK sonar to L0 in 1939 and increasing Germany's advanced sub tech to L2. This isn't a perfect solution, but the dynamics of the Atlantic U-boat war are somewhat better. If UK does not research sonar and Germany gets another sub advance or two, the Royal Navy will have a tough fight on its hands later.

We'll just have to wait and see how SC2 resolves some of the other longstanding issues in this area.

[zappsweden]

Sonar increase defence against ALL naval units, not just subs (manual missprinted).

[Shaka of Carthage]

I've always felt that one of the weaknessess of the submarine unit in SC, is that in effect, it acts just like a surface ship, except it has a special ability (ie the "diving" part).

Taking what Iron Ranger has brought up one step further, even though we can "see" the sub unit, it would seem that physically having a ship in a hex shouldn't prevent an enemy sub from moving thru or into that hex.

So while you could be in the same hex as a enemy submarine, that still doesn't mean you can spot it. I realize SC tried to do this with the "diving" factor, but using numerous ships and/or coastline, you can easily block a sub once you know where it is.

[Edwin P.]

I second Iron Ranger's Idea for a variable spotting percentage of Submarines;

2) Spoting is changed to a decressing % for each hex. 1-2 hexs 100%, 3 hexs 90%, 4 hexs 80% ect... This means at the 4-5 hexs you will spot subs with the bombers the odds of really 'spotting' him will be around 80-70%. You'll need to send you ships in a 'net' pattern to really find the sub.

The only change I would make is to have the Spotting chance modified based on the Sub's Tech Level. So that the chance of Spotting Sub Tech Level 1 would be -10% and the chance of Spotting Sub Tech Level 2 would be -20%.. Sub Tech Level 5 reduces spotting chance by -50%.

Thus the chance for a bomber to spot a Level 2 Sub at 4 hexes out would be 80% minus 20% = 60%. The chance to spot a Level 5 sub at 4 hexes would be 80% minus 50% or 30%.

I think that this would more accurately reflect the ability of higher level subs to run snorkled for longer periods of time.

[Edwin P.]

As Shaka said:

Taking what Iron Ranger has brought up one step further, even though we can "see" the sub unit, it would seem that physically having a ship in a hex shouldn't prevent an enemy sub from moving thru or into that hex.

I totally agree, A sub should have the option to move thru an enemy occupied hex if not spotted by the enemy unit. Say that the chance to avoid being spotted is equal to the subs dive percentage.

So: Sub Moves, along the path of movement it encounters an enemy ship, if the sub avoids detection a popup screen gives two options: Attack or Continue Movement. If continue movement the sub continues to its destination hex unseen by the enemy occupied hex it passed through. If attack the sub gets to attack first as it has suprised the defending naval unit.

[ January 06, 2004, 04:38 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]