Submarine_Wahoo

*USN submarine noises*

Hello, everyone. It's been ages since I posted on the forums, but checking out the submarines was pretty obligatory, given my name. First impressions: - The most powerful tool a submarine has is that they can ascend and descend between surfaced (<6m depth) and submerged states (>6m depth) relatively quickly. Submarines can surface and blast enemy players with forward torpedoes before diving for safety way easier than using the ping system. U-69 is the best submarine out of the three at this tactic, which actually makes up a lot for its clear numeric shortcomings in so many categories. I've only botched the use of this tactic once in about 5-6 battles, and that was a massive error on my part rather than by the skill of the enemy cruiser player. I'll refer to this as peek-a-booming from now on. - Pinging enemy ships is way harder than it looks. There isn't a lot of information that can be gleaned from the UI: the time to target is present, but there is really poor feedback when it comes to where the ping marker hits the enemy target and how far along the path to target the ping actually is. It feels like you're always guess-estimating instead of improving your aim. Pinging actually feels completely unviable in certain circumstances: namely when engaging cruisers and destroyers, especially if they're actively maneuvering. That's not necessarily a bad thing. As is, the sonar ping system looks best suited for submarines trying to snipe with torpedoes early on in a game. It loses value as more and more ships are removed from the game since peek-a-booming becomes more viable. - An icon to present battery life by the targeting reticule will be way better than a numeric representation of battery power. Hoping that is a work in progress. - Total lack of feedback from the ship side of the sub vs. ship interaction regarding pings is a gross exclusion. Players should always know that they have been marked by a ping. Perhaps even inform surface ship players that there is a ping wave going out would make this system feel less one-sided. - There is not enough punishment for submarines to be in submerged state. The decreased speed is a good start, but there are plenty of instances where the optimal course of action for a submarine is to create an engagement where using the peek-a-booming strategy is virtually unavoidable. Perhaps tying the shooting of torpedoes to the battery system is necessary, even if it makes no sense. - I have not been victim to it yet, but getting citadeled by torpedoes looks incredibly feel-bad: the amount of burst damage feels a lot like old CVs dunking on destroyers. Destroyers in those old scenarios could at least make an active effort to avoid getting bullied by CVs with positioning, but there isn't much that a player can do about the ping marks with the above mentioned lack of information regarding its usage. - Out of all of the enemy ship types, destroyers and battleships are the easiest ones for me to face as a submarine. Battleships are obvious enough, since peek-a-booming them at point-blank range is easy and they're the most vulnerable to sonar pings. Destroyer players don't seem to realize that the best strategy for a submarine to win a fight against a destroyer is pretty much do the same subs would do against battleships. It's just a bit trickier to shoot torpedoes at a charging destroyer than it is at a battleship. - ASW seems kind of bipolar: I've seen a lot of anecdotal statements saying either they're really powerful or completely weak. I blame the maximum depth consumable, which I have never used so far since torpedoing destroyers is far more preferable. In this current build, maximum depth is a worthless consumable: submarines should never be in a situation where a destroyer can ASW them unless they intend to fight the destroyer with the peek-a-boom tactic; the complete opposite to what the maximum depth consumable is meant for. Based on the current build, we really need longer range ASW (ie. hedgehogs) before submarines are fully released. If longer ranged ASW makes cruisers better at ASW than destroyers, that's totally fine. Destroyers have too much to do in a match, as it is. - Are submarines fun? They certainly fill a niche that will cater to a certain group of people. But I'm not sure about whether they are fun to fight against. In a knife fight setting, submarines are virtually kings. At moderate range, where they'd be spotted by the use of the ping system, submarines are still pretty effective due to the lack of ranged ASW. At ranges beyond ping detection, submarine effectiveness is a little hard to gauge due to the lack of player information when using pings: experienced players certainly would be monsters, but this can easily be a noob trap as well.

I meant the UC timeline works constantly references other works within the same timeline. Imagine trying to watch Gundam Unicorn without knowing who Puru or Amuro is, or not recognizing the significance of the Quebeley in the two seconds that it is on-screen. It destroys the significance of the scenes that implicitly draw attention to them. You can still piece together what's going on, but the gravitas is missing without previous knowledge.

Iron Blooded Orphans is in its own standalone universe called Post Disaster (hence the year that Phoenix mentioned). It is not related to the Universal Century timeline. However, it is probably the most accessible starting point for anyone too intimidated to get started with Gundam due to its standalone nature plus hitting all of the typical themes that Gundam has espoused. The UC timeline is great, but it has the huge problem of constantly referencing other works of the timeline without letting new viewers in on the scene. Plus, the original Mobile Suit Gundam series didn't age well.

Subs are ridiculously overtuned for the purpose of the event. There's no way that freezing torpedoes would be fair in a PvP situation (it seems like even DCP gets disabled by them).

I don't think the argument of countering another prominent ship necessarily makes it a must-have for team comps. Certainly it's not pointless to bring, but whether it completely replaces certain other ships is yet to be seen.

No, sinking enemy ships is infinitely better than having their AA whittled down because they will still be able to deal damage to me and my team. Relying on another player to do the job for you should only be reserved for instances in which the enemy ship is close to dead and only if it's a ship that you know is already being attacked by your teammates.

I'm willing to bet the choice of ships also is due to the specific strategy that the team chose to employ. Henri IV is not really considered meta on NA, at least.

That was how I was thinking Le Terrible should open a game (sulk around until it can find an opening rather than beeline for objectives), but I was actually referring to being able to shoot over islands akin to American cruisers.

This ship made me wish really hard for a rental system. I like the sort of playstyle the ship is promoting, but the sacrifices are very severe. No smoke pretty much kills Le Terrible's early game presence, unless you manage to not get shot at by half the enemy team. Is island hugging even possible on Le Terrible?

I've always said that the Atlanta should have gotten a smokescreen consumable as the means of buffing her. The Flint is everything that the Atlanta should have been. Perhaps it is better this way: Atlanta spits out far more shells than Flint can. Flint is the ultimate passive-aggressive cruiser, burning down everything that tries to attack, but utterly useless if the enemy decides to camp. I've had fantastic games in the Flint (100k+ damage) as well as mediocre games (40-50k damage) simply because the enemy was too scared of engaging. Then again, an enemy that refuses to move up is risking loss by attrition on Domination or by sacrificing space for their friendly destroyers on Standard Battles. At that point, it becomes a battle of damage output that the Flint struggles to take part in without risking its health to 1/4 throttle forward and create a creeping smokescreen to try to get some shots in on the edge of the short firing range.

I always thought "lemmings" referred to the game called Lemmings, rather than the rodents...

No, it includes all vessels that were commissioned by both navies. See in my OP the following line: ** Warships counted include ships that are designated as transports and auxiliaries and capable of moving under their own power. Basically, the chart is counting all ships and boats that were commissioned by both navies to directly influence the war campaign.

Thanks for the work on the clean Takao class skin. Favorite cruiser, but it bothered me that it was given unhistorical camouflage without the option to remove it.