Submarines and Anti-Submarine Warfare

Maybe for a mobile unit with a long range ballistic missile or cruise missile. That being said, I think that construction units / engineers should be able to reload units, with specialized air replenishment units that do it much faster or more at a time.

But if you want to discuss my views on ammo for something other then subs, please don't do it in this thread.

All im gonna say is if you talk to any honest pilot who has done counter-sub drills (ie, gone looking for one of us) they will tell you that finding us is borderline impossible (one quote I got was they found that combat drill more frustrating than any other they have done). But that is real life. Maybe I am a little biased towards subs but I feel I have seen/ heard enough stories and discussions to verify my belief.


I still stand by my statement of making subs expensive glass cannons with torpedo ammo. I think it would allow them to be the threat they are meant to be while significantly hampering the ability to super spam them.

I have not had much privy to information on modern submarines with all the secrecy that surrounds them, and I know that they have gotten in places without being detected you would think would be impossible, so you may be right about subs being the best counter.

Regarding Limited Ammunition submarines, I just do not know how well it would play. For aircraft I can see it working easily as aircraft are very fast, and spend little time near the target, a submarine is relatively slow and often spends a great deal of time loitering near targets. If they can get rearmed at sea by submarine tenders (submarine submarine tenders would be cool) or by a construction/engineer ship/sub (which would cut down on units) I could see it working.

The subs could manufacture their own torpedoes (like the tac missile launchers or ballistic subs in supcom) or return to the naval yard for a refit. Although a sub is slow, if it takes, say, one torpedo to kill a destroyer or other sub, two for a battleship, and three for a carrier (or something like that) then once they fired their shots (also factor in anti torpedo countermeasures) they have all a sudden lost their teeth and need to wait until the go back for more torps or rebuild them. It obviously would require testing, but what doesnt?

One thing I don't understand in this talk about super powerful submarines is why aren't we talking about anti-torpedo countermeasures?


Another spin on the 'ammo' for submarines is the idea that you could have a magazine capacity that is replenished much slower than it can fire. So you could have 4 torpedoes in the magazine, and fire a torp every second, but it takes 60 seconds to 'load' another torpedo into the magazine. This would result in a high damage 'first strike' option without adding the burden of trying to manage ammo supplies.

"e="mortiferusrosa"]The subs could manufacture their own torpedoes (like the tac missile launchers or ballistic subs in supcom) or return to the naval yard for a refit. Although a sub is slow, if it takes, say, one torpedo to kill a destroyer or other sub, two for a battleship, and three for a carrier (or something like that) then once they fired their shots (also factor in anti torpedo countermeasures) they have all a sudden lost their teeth and need to wait until the go back for more torps or rebuild them. It obviously would require testing, but what doesnt?[/quote]

If torpedo countermeasures are good I could see this working without subs seeming to have way too few torpedoes/missiles.

There are decoys, anti-torpedo torpedoes/bombs/rockets/mortars, and we could also have something like a sonic weapon or supercavitating projectile gun that can shoot into the water.

I think that is a good idea, particularly for larger submarines.

This is a much better way to approach it.

I totally understand the view of people who don't like the rock-paper-scissors kinda thing. But I think submarines are designed to be specialist units by design.

They should be lethal to the average ship. Either because they have insane anti-ship weapons or, much more interestingly, because they are extremely hard to detect.
They should have severe weaknesses too though, beyond not being able to attack land or air. There should be aircraft for example which can attack them. There should be one or two ships which have anti-submarine torpedoes and/or depth charges that should basically cripple them immediately.
It should be an investment to detect them though.

Or perhaps make them more hit and run. For example, make them basically undetectable, even to sonar, unless firing or moving particularly quickly. Then make sure all ship based anti submarine weapons take several seconds to fire, and make sure that the submarine's weapons travel fast enough and do enough damage that a group of 2-3 submarines can safely snipe off a ship or two. But if they were to fire upon a huge fleet, the other 10 ships they didn't kill will be able to destroy them very swiftly.

This sounds fantastic. I do believe submarines are at their best when properly feared but ineffective as a primary force. They should be naval ninjas.

I think that they should be able, with out surfacing, to attack land with missiles, maybe even have some limited ability to attack air. The thing is they should not be able to detect land or air, or at least have a very hard time detecting land and air.

Like this?

well how about that?

Military technology gets more amazing every day.

Yes