Submarines: The unfixable issue of contact distance.

[Subtle_Octavian]

How do you determine if a ship is aggressively attacking at close range versus desperately defending itself?

You can't.

Any submarine at close range has all of it's damage neutered. For some submarines, they have Slow or short range (7km) torpedoes, it's possible to push into the damage mitigation envelope even if they are launched at 7km.

The removal of rudder shift module and buffing the turning circle doesn't help slow submarines (12knt, i-56), but disproportionately benefits the fastest submarines, who can turn and avoid airstrike.

What ham fisted, outright incompetent game design is on display.

The best submarines became even better, and very niche submarines (slow torp, slow speed underwater) became harder to play.

At this point submarines are purely annoying because of their spotting mechanics.

 

[ArIskandir]

Yup, the buffer zone damage castration is a stupid solution, likely the worst imo.  Before falling for something that stupid I would prefer to recall Subs altogether... Some days I'm happy to not be playing anymore 

[Admiral_Karasu]

Well, it's not like subs with slow underwater speed and slow torpedoes are historically accurate at all, anyway.

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

4 hours ago, Subtle_Octavian said:

How do you determine if a ship is aggressively attacking at close range versus desperately defending itself?

You can't.

Any submarine at close range has all of it's damage neutered. For some submarines, they have Slow or short range (7km) torpedoes, it's possible to push into the damage mitigation envelope even if they are launched at 7km.

The removal of rudder shift module and buffing the turning circle doesn't help slow submarines (12knt, i-56), but disproportionately benefits the fastest submarines, who can turn and avoid airstrike.

What ham fisted, outright incompetent game design is on display.

The best submarines became even better, and very niche submarines (slow torp, slow speed underwater) became harder to play.

At this point submarines are purely annoying because of their spotting mechanics.

 

A WG solution, of course.

Did we expect anything else?

[Jakob Knight]

4 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Well, it's not like subs with slow underwater speed and slow torpedoes are historically accurate at all, anyway.

 

Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game.

 

In order to be effective units in the game, Subs must hit with their torpedoes, lacking any other weapon to fight with.  Torpedoes become drastically harder to hit as the range increases.  Therefore to be combat effective, a Sub must close the distance to where a shot has the highest chance of a hit.

 

WG sought to mitigate this somewhat with homing torpedoes (while also giving them a weapon to be used against other Subs), but the uproar by players who felt it was unfair to be hit by Submarine torpedoes impelled WG to implement more and more mechanisms to both discourage and penalize Subs that used that mechanism, resulting in close launched being the more optimal use of a Sub.

 

Now, they have decided to both penalize the Sub for using homing torpedoes from range by giving away much more information about their precise location, and also penalize the Sub for closing the distance to use conventional torpedoes to achieve hits without homing torpedoes.

 

All to appease those who simply don't understand that a Sub is -supposed- to hit with its torpedoes, moreso than any other ship type in the game.  A Sub simply has no alternatives except torpedo hits, even when those torpedoes are lighter and fewer than comparable surface units.

 

I think WG is bending too much in the wind and doesn't realize they are defeating their own goals by boxing Subs into a place where they have no good play options.

 

 

[WES_HoundDog]

5 hours ago, Subtle_Octavian said:

For some submarines, they have Slow torpedoes, it's possible to push into the damage mitigation envelope even if they are launched at 7km.

 

So i'm  looking over shipstool for slow torpedo subs and i'm having trouble finding it.  Can you help me out here?

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

2 minutes ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game.

 

In order to be effective units in the game, Subs must hit with their torpedoes, lacking any other weapon to fight with.  Torpedoes become drastically harder to hit as the range increases.  Therefore to be combat effective, a Sub must close the distance to where a shot has the highest chance of a hit.

 

WG sought to mitigate this somewhat with homing torpedoes (while also giving them a weapon to be used against other Subs), but the uproar by players who felt it was unfair to be hit by Submarine torpedoes impelled WG to implement more and more mechanisms to both discourage and penalize Subs that used that mechanism, resulting in close launched being the more optimal use of a Sub.

 

Now, they have decided to both penalize the Sub for using homing torpedoes from range by giving away much more information about their precise location, and also penalize the Sub for closing the distance to use conventional torpedoes to achieve hits without homing torpedoes.

 

All to appease those who simply don't understand that a Sub is -supposed- to hit with its torpedoes, moreso than any other ship type in the game.  A Sub simply has no alternatives except torpedo hits, even when those torpedoes are lighter and fewer than comparable surface units.

 

I think WG is bending too much in the wind and doesn't realize they are defeating their own goals by boxing Subs into a place where they have no good play options.

 

 

Allowing a sub to hit properly with torpedoes though thoroughly breaks the gameplay.

There is no reason to play surface ships...which is why we all mostly told WG introducing subs wouldn't work easily.

But they didn't believe us...and now, here we are.

The fault for this lies still with WG, not the playerbase.

There is no way to actually balance subs against surface ships...just like planes.

[Jakob Knight]

2 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Allowing a sub to hit properly with torpedoes though thoroughly breaks the gameplay.

There is no reason to play surface ships...which is why we all mostly told WG introducing subs wouldn't work easily.

But they didn't believe us...and now, here we are.

The fault for this lies still with WG, not the playerbase.

There is no way to actually balance subs against surface ships...just like planes.

 

Maybe the solution is to not to try to balance them, but allow each to do what they are supposed to be doing.  A Sub hitting properly with torpedoes no more breaks gameplay than allowing surface ships to hit with their guns.  Both do about the same damage over the same period of time, except that torpedoes are inherently far less accurate.

 

 

[Daniel_Allan_Clark]

13 minutes ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Maybe the solution is to not to try to balance them, but allow each to do what they are supposed to be doing.  A Sub hitting properly with torpedoes no more breaks gameplay than allowing surface ships to hit with their guns.  Both do about the same damage over the same period of time, except that torpedoes are inherently far less accurate.

 

 

That won't be true though in practice.

[Wolfswetpaws]

12 minutes ago, Daniel_Allan_Clark said:

Allowing a sub to hit properly with torpedoes though thoroughly breaks the gameplay.

There is no reason to play surface ships...which is why we all mostly told WG introducing subs wouldn't work easily.

But they didn't believe us...and now, here we are.

The fault for this lies still with WG, not the playerbase.

There is no way to actually balance subs against surface ships...just like planes.

 

Quote

This submarine crew killed 5 destroyers in 4 days
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/uss-harder-hero-world-war-ii-submarine/

Quote

"... The commander and crew could've been cautious for the rest of the patrol and still gone home heroes. But then Dealey and his crew spotted a Japanese task force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. The Japanese spotted the Americans in turn, and a Japanese destroyer charged the little submarine to kill it or force it away.

Dealey decided, instead, to jam torpedoes down its throat. Dealey fired three torpedoes and ordered a crash dive at just 1,500 yards. Two torpedoes struck home with the Harder just 80 feet underneath the target. The sub shook from the blast of its own torpedoes and then spent hours dodging depth charges from the task force.  ..."

I'm curious.
Sometimes people clamor about historical accuracy.
Yet, for *reasons*, some people are advocating that Submarines in this game become the equivalent of *toothless*.

I question, and object to, the notion of nerfing ships merely because some players aren't learning how to mentally cope with the situation and devote their efforts to learning how to deal with the threat and improve their own game play.

I've stated this before, but perhaps it bears repeating, Anti-Submarine-Warfare efforts begin as soon as the teams spawn.
Good ASW efforts involve teamwork.  

Good play is not over powered, in my opinion.

[clammboy]

31 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

 

I'm curious.
Sometimes people clamor about historical accuracy.
Yet, for *reasons*, some people are advocating that Submarines in this game become the equivalent of *toothless*.

I question, and object to, the notion of nerfing ships merely because some players aren't learning how to mentally cope with the situation and devote their efforts to learning how to deal with the threat and improve their own game play.

I've stated this before, but perhaps it bears repeating, Anti-Submarine-Warfare efforts begin as soon as the teams spawn.
Good ASW efforts involve teamwork.  

Good play is not over powered, in my opinion.

Wolf maybe you don't play enough randoms but there is no team work and why on gods green earth would we spawn and immediately start worrying about ASW for subs. 

I'm sorry but I really don't understand this post. Love Clammboy!!!!  

Edited March 16 by clammboy

[WES_HoundDog]

50 minutes ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Maybe the solution is to not to try to balance them, but allow each to do what they are supposed to be doing.  A Sub hitting properly with torpedoes no more breaks gameplay than allowing surface ships to hit with their guns.  Both do about the same damage over the same period of time, except that torpedoes are inherently far less accurate.

 

 

thats all i can say, please don't ban me.

 

34 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Good play is not over powered, in my opinion.

Good play is not what makes something overpowered.

 

34 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

I question, and object to, the notion of nerfing ships merely because some players aren't learning how to mentally cope with the situation and devote their efforts to learning how to deal with the threat and improve their own game play.

The only coping mechinisim to is run away.  And i learn how to deal with the threat better than a lot of scrubs in this game.   Therefore nerfing of subs is not only needed.  It should be a year long event of smacking by juiced up cardinals' with the nerf bat.   This pinata event would have been the perfect way to kick it off.

Edited March 16 by WES_HoundDog

[Lord_Slayer]

1 hour ago, clammboy said:

Wolf maybe you don't play enough randoms but there is no team work

there is no teamwork in randoms, co-op, brawls, ranked, or operations.

Lets just sum it up as there is no teamwork period.

And when you do try to 'work with the team', such as spotting, you get blamed for not doing enough.

[Zaydin]

7 hours ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

Well, it's not like subs with slow underwater speed and slow torpedoes are historically accurate at all, anyway.

A lot of the torpedoes in this game have far longer ranges and speeds than they did in real life. So if you want 'historical accuracy', it means gutting ship based torpedoes too.

[Musket22]

2 hours ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Maybe the solution is to not to try to balance them, but allow each to do what they are supposed to be doing.  A Sub hitting properly with torpedoes no more breaks gameplay than allowing surface ships to hit with their guns.  Both do about the same damage over the same period of time, except that torpedoes are inherently far less accurate.

 

 

What you want subs to be doing what they were suppose to do 'HISTORICALLY'?

How about making them do that with historically performing weapons and specs?

[Zaydin]

9 minutes ago, Musket22 said:

What you want subs to be doing what they were suppose to do 'HISTORICALLY'?

How about making them do that with historically performing weapons and specs?

How about doing the same with every other ship then? How fun will it be for low tier US DDs to have their torpedoes be duds like half the time?

[Wolfswetpaws]

2 hours ago, clammboy said:

Wolf maybe you don't play enough randoms but there is no team work and why on gods green earth would we spawn and immediately start worrying about ASW for subs. 

I'm sorry but I really don't understand this post. Love Clammboy!!!!  

I've played several random and brawls games tonight.
I've played all ship types and all available game modes, during the course of my WOWs *career*.  🙂 

[Admiral_Karasu]

10 hours ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game.

 

In order to be effective units in the game, Subs must hit with their torpedoes, lacking any other weapon to fight with.  Torpedoes become drastically harder to hit as the range increases.  Therefore to be combat effective, a Sub must close the distance to where a shot has the highest chance of a hit.

 

WG sought to mitigate this somewhat with homing torpedoes (while also giving them a weapon to be used against other Subs), but the uproar by players who felt it was unfair to be hit by Submarine torpedoes impelled WG to implement more and more mechanisms to both discourage and penalize Subs that used that mechanism, resulting in close launched being the more optimal use of a Sub.

 

Now, they have decided to both penalize the Sub for using homing torpedoes from range by giving away much more information about their precise location, and also penalize the Sub for closing the distance to use conventional torpedoes to achieve hits without homing torpedoes.

 

All to appease those who simply don't understand that a Sub is -supposed- to hit with its torpedoes, moreso than any other ship type in the game.  A Sub simply has no alternatives except torpedo hits, even when those torpedoes are lighter and fewer than comparable surface units.

 

I think WG is bending too much in the wind and doesn't realize they are defeating their own goals by boxing Subs into a place where they have no good play options.

 

 

'Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game'. And why is that? We've been here before, I think.

I understand very well that a sub is supposed to hit its target with torpedoes, in the case of warships and convoys this would likely be not just their primary weapon but the only weapon as they could not safely surface to use the deck gun. I've played a number of submarine games so I have pretty good idea about the challenges, albeit these are all single player titles, which is relevant if you make the assumption that in PvP the enemy team players present a more capable force than any single player AI enemy.

[Admiral_Karasu]

7 hours ago, Zaydin said:

How about doing the same with every other ship then? How fun will it be for low tier US DDs to have their torpedoes be duds like half the time?

Well.. I look at this way, which are more fun, picture coloring books or plain sheets of paper?

 

[Jakob Knight]

7 hours ago, Musket22 said:

What you want subs to be doing what they were suppose to do 'HISTORICALLY'?

How about making them do that with historically performing weapons and specs?

 

I think you're not understanding.  I already said historical considerations have no bearing on how any ship performs or acts in the game.  My point is that, if balancing Subs and CVs is an impossible task, it's pointless to keep trying (like trying to break down a brick wall with a feather).  Better to leave them as they are and let players learn to deal with them rather than waste time on something that is impossible.  If asymmetric units are impossible to balance, then let them be unbalanced.

 

On the other hand, if balancing them is simply hard rather than impossible, then continued efforts on that task will eventually reach that goal and should be continued.  Of course, if you ascribe to this view, then you have to conclude that those who maintain the impossibility of balancing asymmetric units don't have an accurate idea of what balance actually is when dealing with units in the game.  It also means buffs will accompany nerfs until units are in their correct place.

 

Every person can make their own decision as to which of these two options they choose, but the logical conclusions each offer are inescapable.

 

Edited March 16 by Jakob Knight

[majmac]

When I first glanced at the title, I though it read "...contact disease." 🙂

 

[Jakob Knight]

6 minutes ago, Admiral_Karasu said:

'Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game'. And why is that? We've been here before, I think.

I understand very well that a sub is supposed to hit its target with torpedoes, in the case of warships and convoys this would likely be not just their primary weapon but the only weapon as they could not safely surface to use the deck gun. I've played a number of submarine games so I have pretty good idea about the challenges, albeit these are all single player titles, which is relevant if you make the assumption that in PvP the enemy team players present a more capable force than any single player AI enemy.

 

Why is that?  

 

Because this is a game based on 15-minute, simplified battles featuring ships that can be controlled with only a few keystrokes and which requires each ship to have equal ability to succeed in their task regardless of the opposition, with equally set teams on artificially generated combat areas far more congested with land than would be the case in any normal naval battle, that requires relatively no training by those commanding the ships depicted in them to safely get their ships out of port (let alone fight), and which has no lasting consequences from one battle to the next.

 

History only has a role in the modelwork and the heritage of the ships depicted in the game.  Beyond that, it has as much relevance to the capabilities and roles of each ship in the game as a rook in chess does to an actual castle.  The ships in WOWS are ships in WOWS, not in history, and trying to apply historical considerations in determining or modifying their capabilities is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is how any ship fits into the game.

 

So no, I'm afraid the points you raise are irrelevant to the issue of Subs in WOWS.  What they did in real life is completely separate from what they must do in the game.

 

  

[Hugh_Ruka]

10 hours ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Which has zero relevance to their place and performance in the game.

 

In order to be effective units in the game, Subs must hit with their torpedoes, lacking any other weapon to fight with.  Torpedoes become drastically harder to hit as the range increases.  Therefore to be combat effective, a Sub must close the distance to where a shot has the highest chance of a hit.

 

In order to be effective units in the game, the submarines stop being submarines.

I still don't get why people are trying to make subs work in an arcade game. IRL they were stealth one hit kill ships. That makes a game totally not fun. Imagine there were no detonation flags ... would that be fun after people learned where to hit to cause a detonation with highest probability ?

In an arcade game you go for gradual health degradation through repeated attacks that can be defended against or mitigated to some degree. However that does not work with a one hit kill assassin ... and never will. It just breaks the immersion for the non-assassin parts of the game.

Any game that makes it possible to function as a one hit kill assassin does that with huge cooldowns for that ability exactly because of that immersion breaking factor.

EDIT: CVs were reworked exactly because they had the ability to simply delete a ship with one attack ...

Edited March 16 by Hugh_Ruka

[Admiral_Karasu]

7 minutes ago, Jakob Knight said:

 

Why is that?  

 

Because this is a game based on 15-minute, simplified battles featuring ships that can be controlled with only a few keystrokes and which requires each ship to have equal ability to succeed in their task regardless of the opposition, with equally set teams on artificially generated combat areas far more congested with land than would be the case in any normal naval battle, that requires relatively no training by those commanding the ships depicted in them to safely get their ships out of port (let alone fight), and which has no lasting consequences from one battle to the next.

 

History only has a role in the modelwork and the heritage of the ships depicted in the game.  Beyond that, it has as much relevance to the capabilities and roles of each ship in the game as a rook in chess does to an actual castle.  The ships in WOWS are ships in WOWS, not in history, and trying to apply historical considerations in determining or modifying their capabilities is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is how any ship fits into the game.

 

So no, I'm afraid the points you raise are irrelevant to the issue of Subs in WOWS.  What they did in real life is completely separate from what they must do in the game.

 

  

Let's say we have radically different expectations when it comes to WoWS. What you are saying about the 15 minute long battles, simplified controls and the works, basically, is something that was true when I started playing this game, and I started playing it in open beta. You could argue that I had expectations that carried over single player simulation games, but a large part of my expectations for this game were also formed when I was starting to play, and going up the initial tech trees all the way to tier X. I knew, what the meta and gameplay were like, and while there undoubtedly were things I didn't fancy that much, I also didn't think WG was doing something majorly wrong.

 

[Yedwy]

@OP i agree, it would be better to give them some large arming treshold liek IDK 3km or so but leave the damage in tact