primemountain

I'll cop to not playing BBs, I find them fat. I've played Cruisers, DDs, CVs, and subs, lately. I have to correct one lie being repeated here, subs can be detected by planes. At periscope depth, that detection radius is about 2km, at 30m depth, it's more like 1km-500m, but you can still spot them from the air, I have been. CVs are the bane of subs, and they don't need to stick around, just give a general area for all the depth charges to hit. I do agree the depth charge planes should have the same range as the torps, as well as that dealing with opposing fire, planes, and subs it too much to do at once, as a DD or Cruiser. But if you're in a 3v1, it's supposed to be nearly impossible. It should mean somewhere else your team is apply their freed up numbers on the enemy. That's not how it works out in practice in randoms, not often, but that's the theory. In my experience, much like CVs, there are two deciding factors: For CVs it's the Carriers ability to stay away from clumps and pick out and scout targets. I have running into some of the ships with good AA as a Carrier, and am always looking for the ones with bad AA to bomb. But the ones with good AA can keep me at bay indefinitely. They like posting in all chat "give me more planes, CV". That's the trade off. You can't have "best guns, best armor, best speed, and best AA, and Radar, and hydro." The trouble was that until carriers came along, best gun was the main metric for how good a ship was. With subs, it's a matter of coordination. The most important thing for a sub is not to be spotted for the first time, because you're slow. If someone spots you for the first time, then the counterplay kicks in. This is usually the role of DDs and CVs and Radar, as a good Sub player will try to preserve battery. DDs drop smoke after spotting, and run. The other part is the response. The way to deal with subs is simple. The moment they're spotted, ping your team. One depth charge bomber is managable, but I've lost count of the number of times I'm at the edge of a cap, get radared, and 4-5 of them fire vollies on me, cruisers, DDs, everyone. It takes me 5-10 sec to go deep enough to avoid surface fire, and it cuts my speed to 12-15knots. Which is then the 3-5 depth charge bombers arrive and I just die. The main trouble is coordination and positioning. You need to be in range of the cap to bomb the sub, and respond as soon as it is spotted, with everyone. Then subs have bad days, and learn to stay back. At max range, there's a trick to avoiding homing torps that always works, ping or no ping. You do need some space for it, but if you know what you're doing, beyond like 6 to 8 km, homing torps will never hit you, BB, or cruiser. If it's a 1v1. That's the real problem. What subs add is stacking. If the enemy sub is in your face, while BBs and cruisers are firing from a distance, a CV is bombing you, and DDs and subs are torping you, you're fucked and it feels terrible. It's happened to me several times in my Cruiser. But that's 1v3 or more fighting. That's the thing. I wouldn't be any less fucked if I was up against 3 BBs. It would be more manageable, since I wouldn't have to worry around AA and torps, and pings, and everything, just the firing arcs. This happens often in randoms. Like skilled CVs, skilled subs have a large impact on the game. About the same as the difference between gun ships that spam fire shells, and those capable of citadel hits. That's the thing. A Japanese bomber wing that hits three bombs but not citadels is 3-5k damage. 3 citadels is 18k+. Per pass. So if I'm a sub and I know what I'm doing, and your sub doesn't? You're gonna have a bad time as he charges face first into depth charges, and I get to stack up. The best games I've had as a sub, for everyone, was with CVs that also knew what they were doing. Where subs are dueling under the point with torps, while DDs and cruisers duel above our heads, and depth charges and shells fall all around us, while CV planes poke around the edges and dart in. But that's not what usually happens. What usually happens is I find the other sub, kill it, and then move on down the list of other BBs and cruisers. Because many of them don't even know what the button is for deploying depth charges, let alone how to use it in a coordinated fashion and when, which is the main counterplay. Subs are frail. It takes one good volley, or one good depth charge to nail half our health. But you only get 5-10 sec to react to get that hit, or you need a team to blanket the area and zone subs out. And that takes experience and practice. And better damn tips, on loading screens. Subs have them, since subs were introduced, there should be more of them for Cruisers and BBs, and how to coordinate and ping areas for bombing. The worst nightmare for a sub is a charging DD that knows what he's doing. The same tricks that work for BBs at a distance for torps, work for cruisers and even better for DDs when charging a sub. If you know where one is, and it doesn't have the support of four other ships covering it, forcing it to dive is easy. And once underwater, it's limited to 12-15knots, and can be spotted from the air, if it doesn't dive to full depth, where it speed drops even further. At that point, just call in the depth charges and call it a day. Which naturally means in random games you'll get random experiences and until more people get used to subs, more swing games. I've had sub games where I couldn't hit a single torp in 15mins, because every BB, Cruiser and DD knew how to dodge and zone me out, and my team wouldn't cover me properly. And I've had games where I almost can't miss, and BBs run into islands panicking from pings. What subs need is the one thing Wargaming never gives us: proper tutorials on how to use them, and fight against them. And to fix the damn range on depth charge planes. I should not be able to torp them when they can't shoot back, and it's irritating as hell to know where the bugger is hiding, but not have reach to paste him. No, the actual guns don't count. That's like trying to nail a needle in a heystack. I've tried. You give BBs proper range, and not only will they have counterplay, with coordination, zoning subs away will be much easier, and so infinite pings will be a risk/reward mechanism, as each ping gives away a general location. And if that location isn't under an AA envelope (sub don't even have AA), you better be on the surface and fully exposed to all the rules of spooting if you want to try to dance between those mines. Because at 12-15knots underwater, you can't. TLDR: Range for depth charges on planes from Cruisers and particularly BBs should be the same as sub torp range, if not longer for BBs. The rest is experience, practice, tips, and teamwork. And subs at periscope depth can be spotted from the air at 2km, and at 30m depth, at 1km-500m.