Planes vs. Subs

Krieghund

Thanks for the lengthly explanation.

The range of air units and the size of the oceans in the game make it very easy for air units to find and eliminate subs, if air units are capable of hitting them on their own.

Yes, I always felt there was an imbalance here.  However,  I feel a better solution would have been to increase sea zones, especially in the Atlantic.  This would create a space out of range for aircraft and also force transports to be vulnerable for one turn while transporting cargo across the Atlantic.

It also promotes the purchase and maintenance of more well-rounded fleets, as destroyers are necessary to guard against the threat of subs.  This reflects the reality that subs were a constant threat to military shipping as well, and that no convoy would travel without destroyer escorts because of that threat.  At the same time, it keeps them from being used as cheap “cannon fodder” in naval battles, as they were most often not used extensively in fleet operations, but rather as harrassing hunters where their unique properties were best utilized.

From an economic standpoint, the necessity of buying destroyers for protection against subs also reflects the economic losses sustained by raids against merchant shipping by submarines.

Even if you allow aircraft to attack subs, I don’t think it would change what you said above.  Destroyers are still going to be the most economical way of dealing with subs.

Anyway, if you were to allow aircraft to attack subs.  How would you do it?  I think by allowing aircraft to have an attack value of 1 or 2 would reflect the difficulty of finding and attacking one.

@ragnarok628:

reality is shot to hell once you even START to make this a board game, because it is definitely not realistic for each power to know the exact makeup and location of the other powers’ fleets!

Yes,true to an extent.

even though planes attacked subs in WWII, they didn’t already happen to know the location of every enemy sub beforehand.

In the case of the Allies, they didn’t know the location of every sub, just most of them.  Thanks to our guys cracking the Japanese code and the British for capturing the German Enigma decoder but I’m not focusing on this fact.

therefore allowing air strikes on subs would result in a completely UNREALISTIC dominance of aircraft over submarines to the extent that the subs would rarely ever be built in the game.

It’s not an unrealistic one, just an unfair one if aircraft are allowed to attack subs with their full attack value and I realize that.

However, I’m no longer interested in replies to my original post.  I was satisfied with the replies by Krieghund & Hobbes.

What I’m interested at this point is what rules and restrictions would you implement to allow aircraft to attack subs but in a way would not create a significant imbalance in game play?  If anyone else has an idea, I’d like to know.

@ragnarok628:

well if we wanted to get tricky, we could always add an asymmetric information element.  let’s say subs are invisible except to destroyers or units being attacked by the sub.  call it a constant submerged state.  the position could be tracked by pen and paper in case of a dispute.  if a destroyer enters a sz occupied by an enemy sub, the owner of the sub must say so.  then simply allow planes to attack ‘unsubmerged’ subs at full attack value.

not TOO incredibly complicated, although it is probably inconvenient to use pen and paper in such a way.  sub buys are still announced, etc. etc.

also it feels wrong to have a ‘fog of war’ for subs exclusively.

Thanks for the suggestions.  It’s a creative solution and could work but I’m  looking for a more simplified solution.

The easiest one I can think of at this point it to allow aircraft to sink a sub on a role of 1 instead of 3.  The lower role would signify the difficulty of spotting and sinking the sub beforeit submerged.