47Foxtrot

That is a myth. Five years ago, WG was saying that subs were a possibility after the cruiser lines were split.

WG was saying that subs were being considered at least 4.5 years ago. Here's a post I made back then mentioning as much:

IMO the game desperately needs something like this. I was in CBT, but I stopped playing years ago because the gameplay became so stale. It's basically World of Tanks with giant land tanks playing around mountains and hiding in forests. If you choose the wrong direction, you have two choices: turn around, run, and kite the enemy, hoping the rest of your team can win; or rambo into them and throw your ship away, hoping to deal some damage before you die. Neither option is interesting or fun. If you choose the right direction, you're competing with your own teammates to see who can do the most damage and get the last hit on ships that are destined to die. That's also boring. The window of time in these maximum-20-minute matches in which your decisions can meaningfully affect the outcome of the match is very small. There's very little opportunity to, e.g. retreat, reposition, flank, attack a different target or objective, etc. There's very little opportunity to react to the conditions of the battle and exploit the enemy's weaknesses, because the information needed to do so doesn't become available until it's too late to make use of it. Turning a large ship around takes about 3-5% of the total match time, and moving from one objective to the other takes 20-40% of it. So you have to roll the dice at the beginning, choosing a direction and hoping it works out. Every match is like gambling for a supercontainer: disappointing most of the time. I want maps that are bigger and matches that last longer. I want individual battles during a match to be sized more like ranked battles, and objectives that are further apart. I want to be able to narrowly win a battle, regroup with other ships, repair our damage, and choose which objective to fight next and how to approach it, using intel provided by other ships. That would be so much more interesting. But I guess that wouldn't fit in the WoT model in which you either YOLO, kite, or peek for about 12 minutes, then pick another ship and repeat. It's just boring. :( And that's a shame, because it's a nice looking game, and the gunplay is reasonably fun, but everything else around it is stale. And it's been that way for years. (Which is why I'm hoping subs will make the game more interesting, despite all their potential problems. The game desperately needs depth, figuratively and literally.)

Very well said, sir (all of your post). Here's another consideration for the people who really love the status quo of this game: if WG doesn't keep making enough money to satisfy them, the game won't continue existing. WG only makes money by convincing people to grind toward unlocking pretend ships. And they've nearly exhausted the library of surface ships they could add (some would say that they passed that point a long time ago, what with all ships now being merely +0.1 this, -0.1 that, and many of them being paper ships). So if they don't add subs, something truly new (at least, to an extent), they're going to have to add something else, like atomic artillery or guided missiles, which would also significantly change the game (as well as either sinking the pretense of the theme of the historical eras, or expand the game into others). Because if they don't, the players will unlock everything, and they'll become bored and quit buying subscriptions (because the basic gameplay doesn't have that much depth to begin with). Face it: the game has to evolve to stay alive. If you want the game to stay just as it is, then you need to make your own, open-source naval combat game and host it yourself. Anyway, WoWS is really just World of Tanks with really big, really slow tanks. Imagine 500-foot-long land ships on the great plains, cozying up to mountains for cover and hiding in forests for concealment. There, that's this game. Who cares if they add unrealistic subs to that?

On the other hand, some people got bored with the game years ago. It hasn't fundamentally changed since beta. Subs add a new dimension (literally, a new dimension) that I think is fun. Therefore, let's add them to the game to make it more interesting and fun. Or it could just coast on, continually bloated by new ships that are merely x+0.1, y-0.1 variants that add nothing fundamentally new or interesting, until WG runs out of imaginary ships to make and has squeezed every last one of 17 different in-game currencies out of the current players. Maybe then, when it has truly and completely been exhausted, you will concede that it is a wee bit stale and needs some more depth (literally and figuratively).

Thanks for that clarification. So the issue, IMO, is that the term Hydrophones is too similar to Hydro-Acoustic Search. One or both of them should be renamed to better distinguish them. Then it will be more clear what the Maximum Depth consumable actually does hide a sub from.

That sounds good to me. But this game gave up on realism a long time ago. These guided torpedoes work more like radar-guided air-to-air missiles. Nowadays I think of WoWS as loosely inspired by real-world naval combat. It's a pretty game, but in no way realistic.

I'd be in favor of renaming Hydrophones to "passive sonar" and Hydro-Acoustic Search to "active sonar."

I don't think it would be fair to characterize the small number of human players per sub match as indicative of antipathy toward subs being in the game. There are several issues here: Despite the game saying that wait time for sub games is unlimited, I've never even waited 2 minutes for a match, even when there are 5 players and 7 bots per team. (I'd gladly wait a few more minutes for a full game.) The matches are very short. The maps are small, and many players and bots rush straight ahead and die within 4 minutes. In most games, the countdown clock shows something like 16:56 remaining when the announcer says, "Our team is about to win!" The match usually ends before 10 minutes is up. The maps are very small. This gives little opportunity to execute flanks, use positioning to lay traps, etc. Playing against so many bots doesn't give a realistic picture of how subs will perform in matches without bots. Subs will be much less effective in them, because even bot DDs and cruisers can easily evade sub torpedoes. Given all that, it's to be expected that many players won't find it satisfying to play in these matches. But that doesn't have much to do with the subs in them.

I have searched Google, the WoWS wiki, etc, but I can't find any distinction between "Hydro-Acoustic Search" and "Hydrophones." The Maximum Depth consumable says, "At this depth, the submarine will be invisible to enemy Hydrophones." If that does not refer to "Hydro-Acoustic Search," it is extremely misleading, and I would like to know what it does refer to, and why the subs in my screenshots were detected.

Despite being in CBT, I got tired of WoWS years ago. The gameplay was simply too two-dimensional (literally and figuratively). Every match felt like rolling the dice: either my team would collapse and I'd be a punching bag for the remaining enemy ships, or my team would steamroll the other and it'd devolve into a mad rush for the last hit on a few enemy ships. There was only a short window of a few minutes in which my decisions and actions made any difference on the outcome of a match; outside of that, it was like watching dogs chase squirrels, trying to predict where they would go next, and if I guessed wrong, the game was a waste of time. Subs haven't fixed that fundamental problem with WoWS gameplay. But they have added a new dimension (literally and figuratively), and they have made it much more interesting to play. So I'm playing again. A few thoughts: 1. I've heard some people calling for CVs and BBs to get more counterplay to subs, and I saw some WG employees on Twitch say that they plan to address that. I think that's unnecessary. I've played a bunch of subs matches now, and, of course, most of the enemy ships have been bots (I'd gladly wait a couple more minutes to get a full game of human players). Despite that, I've had bot BBs and cruisers easily dodge torpedoes fired at their stern as they were running. Long-range shots with the Cachalot are easily avoided by any combat maneuvering. Guided torpedoes are easily dodged by any ship, because they can barely turn and become unguided at 1 km. Close-range, unguided shots are avoided by not letting the sub get close, because they are very slow underwater and very vulnerable on the surface. So it seems to me that the counterplay for CVs and BBs (especially fast ones) is to use the rudder, throttle, and minimap. As well, ASW ships quickly destroy subs that can't go to 80m depth. A few depth charges is all it takes. And subs that are hiding at 80m depth are useless. And ASW ships have enough maneuverability to easily avoid sub torpedoes. So even if a certain sub is avoiding detection or depth charges for a little while, the solution is to attack other ships and the objectives. 2. I expect that, in games with only human players, subs' effectiveness will be greatly reduced. I expect players to view them as a liability more than a strength, because they are slow, weak, and their torpedoes are easily avoided. 3. Groups of players using DDs and hydro-equipped subs will be able to wipe out enemy subs very quickly, especially in the mid-to-late stages of the game. DDs that don't suicide early will be very strong against subs later. So, in conclusion: Subs are a good addition to the game. They add variety and depth (ha). Subs aren't perfect yet, but the progress in development seems good. Subs aren't that strong, so they are far from game-breaking. (I wish it hadn't taken them nearly five years to do it.)

The stats do not appear to indicate that: Cachalot Max speed: 24 kts Turn radius: 590m Rudder shift time: 3.1s U-69 Max speed: 24 kts Turn radius: 660m Rudder shift time: 5.2s

Here are two screenshots demonstrating that, contrary to the description of the Maximum Depth consumable, it does not render subs invisible to enemy hydrophones. In this first screenshot, you can see that the sub is at 80m depth, the Maximum Depth consumable is active and has 35 seconds remaining, yet it is detected by an enemy DD using its hydrophone. You might think that enemy sub hydrophones are an exception to the described rule, so perhaps there's an enemy sub within 4 km using hydro. But then there is this screenshot: Here you can see the sub at 80m depth, with 8.7 seconds remaining on the active Maximum Depth consumable, and 4.5 seconds remaining on the active hydrophone consumable. There are no enemy subs within 4 km, only the DD that is parked overhead waiting for his depth charges to come off cooldown, detecting the sub with its hydrophone. It does not appear that Maximum Depth works as described.