Have submarines become irrelevant?

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

Since the last changes, I've played submarines once and I've had two or three close encounters with them. In summary:

 

As a submarine, I spotted a bit, fired quite a few torpedoes, a couple hit. Ended the game with something like 14k damage (tier 8, I think). The game was unremarkable to frustrating.

 

As a Scharnhorst, I got pinged. I thought "ah, crap, I'm dead". But... I got pinged again and again. I DC'd one set of homing torpedoes - *phew* - then got pinged again and another set was incoming. I thought "this is it, bye bye world". But no! I turned and dodged the whole lot.

 

As a Ragnar I came upon a U-MeaninglessNumbers. It took a while, but I ran him down and depth-charged him (thanks forward-firing launchers)! He was too fast, but in the end no problem.

 

So... is that it? Are submarines now a meaningless, small annoyance? Are they relevant at all?

 

Full disclosure: I like submarines and would like a well thought-out iteration in the game.

[Yedwy]

Subs dont fit the kind of battles we have in WOWS by virtue of base mechanics, hence they can only exist in two forms - somewhat balanced and irrelevant AND utterly overpowered and broken for griefing, wg has a choice of which of those two it will be…

[Cpt_Andre]

18 minutes ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Since the last changes, I've played submarines once and I've had two or three close encounters with them. In summary:

 

As a submarine, I spotted a bit, fired quite a few torpedoes, a couple hit. Ended the game with something like 14k damage (tier 8, I think). The game was unremarkable to frustrating.

 

As a Scharnhorst, I got pinged. I thought "ah, crap, I'm dead". But... I got pinged again and again. I DC'd one set of homing torpedoes - *phew* - then got pinged again and another set was incoming. I thought "this is it, bye bye world". But no! I turned and dodged the whole lot.

 

As a Ragnar I came upon a U-MeaninglessNumbers. It took a while, but I ran him down and depth-charged him (thanks forward-firing launchers)! He was too fast, but in the end no problem.

 

So... is that it? Are submarines now a meaningless, small annoyance? Are they relevant at all?

 

Full disclosure: I like submarines and would like a well thought-out iteration in the game.

Always has been, never understand the fuss about

[Tanaka_15]

24 minutes ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Since the last changes, I've played submarines once and I've had two or three close encounters with them. In summary:

 

As a submarine, I spotted a bit, fired quite a few torpedoes, a couple hit. Ended the game with something like 14k damage (tier 8, I think). The game was unremarkable to frustrating.

 

As a Scharnhorst, I got pinged. I thought "ah, crap, I'm dead". But... I got pinged again and again. I DC'd one set of homing torpedoes - *phew* - then got pinged again and another set was incoming. I thought "this is it, bye bye world". But no! I turned and dodged the whole lot.

 

As a Ragnar I came upon a U-MeaninglessNumbers. It took a while, but I ran him down and depth-charged him (thanks forward-firing launchers)! He was too fast, but in the end no problem.

 

So... is that it? Are submarines now a meaningless, small annoyance? Are they relevant at all?

 

Full disclosure: I like submarines and would like a well thought-out iteration in the game.

thats good, but still subs are OP aganist DDs and way to fast. like CVs this is class thats shuld never be implemented in first place. 

[S_h_i_v_a]

I'm happy if no one plays them.

[Yedwy]

3 minutes ago, Tanaka_15 said:

thats good, but still subs are OP aganist DDs and way to fast. like CVs this is class thats shuld never be implemented in first place. 

At least with CVs one can understand the base line as they were part of Fleet actions although I personally would make them start at T6 and there they would only sport the interwar biplanes and not modern monoplanes as the T6 should by the timeline be late WW1 and early post war/inter war stuff and not devastators and such…

 

Subs on the other hand NEVER played any significant role in either WW1 or WW2 Fleet actions as their low speeds didn’t really allow them to do it, only early Cold war and wery last of the WW2 era designs could even reach the speeds neccesary to even consider that, by extension subs might be viable as superships at the very top tiers and That’s even streaching it

[ColorsOfRainbows]

They were 6knots underwater and are 30,knots in-game. They are either useless or you buff them into kind of spaceships...

[Tanaka_15]

12 minutes ago, ColorsOfRainbows said:

They were 6knots underwater and are 30,knots in-game. They are either useless or you buff them into kind of spaceships...

TBh why not make them 30 kts on sufrace and 10 kts submarged? and give them 4km or somting like that spoting range. Play them as diving torpedo launcher. And in this way dds could actually hunt and kill subs with deep charges. 

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

1 hour ago, Tanaka_15 said:

TBh why not make them 30 kts on sufrace and 10 kts submarged? and give them 4km or somting like that spoting range. Play them as diving torpedo launcher. And in this way dds could actually hunt and kill subs with deep charges. 

I also think submarines should be much slower underwater. However, they should have some strengths. I'd say devastating torpedoes. Few, but devstrike material. People wouldn't like that though.

[Wulf_Ace]

so yesterday i played them beacouse of naval battle points.(tier6)

4 minutes to get into a firing position, then stand and aim and fire everybody in range, mostly bbs who cant or dont know to dodge. Great damage. If spotted, 90% of the time by cv,death was imenent fast,with all those depth charges from planes.

if spotted by ship, then wasting whole time underwater to hide and avoid(gameplay ultra boring) 

 

In summary, gameplay is slow,boring,not rewarding, and it feels like you dont need much skill, only skill you need is that they dont spot you or you are dead, and guess what, when CV is around thats almost impossible.

 

Gameplay against them, they are like mosquitos,ultra boring and annoying. 

They really dont fit into this game, but WG will shoved them up our throat and we cant do anything about it. They will just write articles like" people love subs and feedback was amazing"...

[Yedwy]

16 minutes ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

I also think submarines should be much slower underwater. However, they should have some strengths. I'd say devastating torpedoes. Few, but devstrike material. People wouldn't like that though.

Problem is that defies logic, ie a small sub torpedo outperforming a long lance?

[Camperdown]

11 minutes ago, Yedwy said:

Problem is that defies logic, ie a small sub torpedo outperforming a long lance?

Hmm, sounds like WG: defying any logic. I think he is onto something 

[SkollUlfr]

1 hour ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

I also think submarines should be much slower underwater. However, they should have some strengths. I'd say devastating torpedoes. Few, but devstrike material. People wouldn't like that though.

sure. but for this to work, they need the rest of the games mechanics entirely overhauled. all of them.

name a mechanic and im confident i can give a reason it needs reworked to accommodate subs.

[tocqueville8]

I've never played them beyond Co-op or the dedicated mode...last year?

 

Imho:

 

1) homing torps are harder to use than regular torps or regular guns, as they're not fire-and-forget. They might be OP or not, depending on the damage and switch-off distance (why should there be a switch-off distance? ), but the point is they require more work than, say, those of a Shima

 

2) depth controls add a new dimension to sailing, and lots of inexpert players have no idea how to cope with that: they'll go submerged (because muh sub...) instead of spotting, run out of battery power, stay at operating instead of maximum depth when depth charged, etc.

 

Basically, it seems the skill floor is too high, which makes them useless in the hands of the average player, so to balance things they had to make the skill ceiling high as well, which makes (made?) them toxic in the hands of good players (those who bother).

[Bindolaf_Werebane]

1 hour ago, Yedwy said:

Problem is that defies logic, ie a small sub torpedo outperforming a long lance?

Small sub torpedo? Submarines carried normal torpedoes. Big, lethal ones. To also answer @SkollUlfr above, in a game of rock, paper, scissors, submarines could be a joker. A slow, ticking time-bomb. Find it, or it will infiltrate the back of your lines and almost instantly take out one ship. I mean that's not my kind of gameplay, but it's conceivable.

 

[Gvozdika]

They are irrelevant UNTIL one decides to target you and make you the subject of much pinging/torping. Usually when you are trying to push or operate a bit more aggressively away from islands or in open water. Then they become every bit as toxic to gameplay and fun-sucking as a CV who focuses you all game. Unlike a CV - you don't get a brief break from spotting or incoming fire while they send out another squadron - the sub just follows you around like a bad smell until you a) break contact or b) they get bored and go for someone else.

 

The only good thing is that they are SO universally despised - the moment they get spotted everyone (even their own teammates on occasion - I SO wish friendly fire was still with us) drops airstrike DCs on them. You normally cannot rely upon randoms to focus on a spotted DD or high value target in the same way that they seem to if a sub shows up. 

[Gvozdika]

11 minutes ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Small sub torpedo? Submarines carried normal torpedoes. Big, lethal ones. To also answer @SkollUlfr above, in a game of rock, paper, scissors, submarines could be a joker. A slow, ticking time-bomb. Find it, or it will infiltrate the back of your lines and almost instantly take out one ship. I mean that's not my kind of gameplay, but it's conceivable.

 

For the record - most ship-borne torpedoes were physically bigger/nastier than those carried by a sub. So relative to a surface ship - sub torpedoes were smaller. Probably didn't matter all that much to you if you had someone blowing holes in your ship but they had to compromise on range or warhead to be practical on a WW2-era submarine. 

 

That was until the Cold War when you began to see the term 'heavyweight torpedo' as a sub-launched torp that was big enough, fast enough and long-legged enough to kill a ship with a single strike. Ships torpedoeing each other was no longer much of a thing after missiles came along by then so it all gets academic. You don't want to get hit by anything explodey end of. 

[Yedwy]

34 minutes ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

Small sub torpedo? Submarines carried normal torpedoes. Big, lethal ones. To also answer @SkollUlfr above, in a game of rock, paper, scissors, submarines could be a joker. A slow, ticking time-bomb. Find it, or it will infiltrate the back of your lines and almost instantly take out one ship. I mean that's not my kind of gameplay, but it's conceivable.

No they didn’t, you should inform yourself more about what kind of compromises were made for sub torpedoes (same goes for AIR dropped ones) compared to those carried by surface ships…

[Camperdown]

1 minute ago, Yedwy said:

No they didn’t, you should inform yourself more about what kind of compromises were made for sub torpedoes (same goes for AIR dropped ones) compared to those carried by surface ships…

F.e. Japanese subs did not have 24" long Lance torpedoes but 21" ones. 

[Yedwy]

3 minutes ago, Camperdown said:

F.e. Japanese subs did not have 24" long Lance torpedoes but 21" ones. 

Exactly or rather they carried torps that were derivatives of longlance but quite weaker in all aspects and they were still among better ones in ww2 in regard of firepower

[Trench4nt]

Well, over the last weeks, there typically occurred four scenarios that happen the most, when there was a match with subs included (not that many).

 

1. Sub gets spotted somewhere in the center and everybody throws his ASW on it -> sub dead.

2. One gets pinged and immediately through ASW in ping direction. Repeat this three to four times (or two times with help) --> sub dead and you eat - at least - a few torps.

3. One gets pinged and for some reason, the sub is directly in front of your ship, because it was forced to ascend --> death by artillery and/or ASW (through other players)

4. Sub does not take part at the game at all but, after 10 to 15min starts attacking the carrier. 

 

I experienced one single game where the enemy sub was in the top group and played very well (Kraken). Usually, you find subs at the bottom of the score table.

 

Even with the newest changes, I do not expect subs to have any carry potential or even an "above average" impact on the game. Yes, there are opportunities and a lot of videos showing good performance, but most of them mainly resulting from other players lacking counterplay - which changed in the meantime.

 

I am really asking myself whether all this development was worth it. 

[lovelacebeer]

The question is how will WG react to this current iteration of testing, will they buff submarines to preposterous levels to get the desired popularity ( my cynical nature means I expect so), or will they accept them as they are and just shove them into tech trees to meet some internal target date.  

The whole submarine project is sadly a good example of all that is wrong with WG, they have failed utterly to take into account how they have designed the game and how submarines function within the base mechanics. The result is they created something so unlike submarines they are just an appalling project. 

[Nibenay78]

6 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

So... is that it? Are submarines now a meaningless, small annoyance? Are they relevant at all?

They are still annoying and also take up a slot that a proper and fun friend/opponent could fill. Waste of space really..

[WWDragon]

3 hours ago, Yedwy said:

Exactly or rather they carried torps that were derivatives of longlance but quite weaker in all aspects and they were still among better ones in ww2 in regard of firepower

 

61 cm (24") Type 93 (1933) Model 1, Explosive Charge: 1,080 lbs. (490 kg) Type 97

53.3 cm (21") Type 96 (1936 but actually 1941), Explosive Charge: 1,213 lbs. (550 kg) Type 97

 

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTJAP_WWII.php

 

So, no ... they had a much sorter ranger (4,500 m) but had a bigger explosive charge and about the same speed (48-50 knots), there was a smaller version of the Type 93 developed for submarines, the 53.3 cm (21") Type 95 (1935) Model 1 but the Model 2 already had a larger warhead (the same as on the Type 96) with a very respectable range of 7,500 m at 45-47 knots that was smaller that the Model 1 that had a much more respectable range of 12,000 m at 45-47 knots and to compare with the G7e T2 and T3 those had a speed of 30 knots and a range of 7,500 m with a smaller warhead that is as as low as 617 lbs. (280 kg) and as high as 948 lbs. (430 kg). the T1 version that was the standard torpedo had the same warhead, was about 10/14 knots faster and had a longer range of 8,750 yards (8,000 m) at 40 knots or 15,300 yards (14,000 m) at 30 knots.

 

[SkollUlfr]

4 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

in a game of rock, paper, scissors, submarines could be a joker.

rock paper scissors balancing died before open beta. if it hadnt the game would have failed before german ships where added.

 

4 hours ago, Bindolaf_Werebane said:

A slow, ticking time-bomb. Find it, or it will infiltrate the back of your lines and almost instantly take out one ship. I mean that's not my kind of gameplay, but it's conceivable.

again, for this to work, they need the rest of the games mechanics entirely overhauled. all of them.

 

... and any unit capable of "almost instantly take out one ship", would not need to sneak to the back lines. going right back to subs being either nurfed to oblivion or brokenly powerful. with no middle ground, due to the game not having the under-lying mechanics to integrate the class properly.