Submerging before battle?

[Azimuth]

Hello,

I would like to understand better how this rule is usually applied by experienced players:

Before the general sea battle takes place, both attacking and defending submarines can choose to either make a Surprise Strike die roll or submerge. A player may choose to submerge all, some, or none of his or her submarines.

Clear. But practically speaking, I would expect:

• the rule never to be enforced for attacking subs (otherwise what is the purpose to bring them into the battle?)
• the rule to be applied for defending subs only if no other defending units, because the ability to be used as canon fodder and save better/more expensive units always prevail otherwise (unless the battle is so dramatically hopeless that it is clearly wiser to save at least the subs).
• the option of submerging only some of the subs never to be used (cannot figure out a situation where it could be an interesting choice)

Or are there other parameters/situations I’ve not considered for this rule to exist?

And side-question about TripleA: the engine doesn’t give the option to partially submerge, right? Are there players still enforcing this option? And how?

Thanks!

[shadowhawk]

@Azimuth

Partial submerging is a bit weird, cant find a reason to do so.

For attacking/defending subs it might be that you want to move into a seazone for the porpose of convoy damage. If there are no destroyers it will technically be a sea battle but you dont want to fight.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@shadowhawk

For the latter scenario you can just do that in the non-combat move.

As for the original poster, I’ve come to the exact same conclusions. I’m not that great of a player though.

[shadowhawk]

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Submerging before battle?:

@shadowhawk

For the latter scenario you can just do that in the non-combat move.

As for the original poster, I’ve come to the exact same conclusions. I’m not that great of a player though.

In non combat its not legal to do moves that could result in combat. Your moving your sub into a hostile seazone. So you must do this in combat move. Ofcourse it makes no difference if you play F2F if you move it in combat or non-combat.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@shadowhawk

Ah, okay. Thanks for clarifying.

[Azimuth]

@shadowhawk Thank you, it makes (some kind of) sense for convoy raids.

Nevertheless, the rule is phrased exactly the same in other versions of the game (Anniversary, and most probably 1942, hence I haven’t checked the later) whilst they don’t have convoy rules.

So I remain puzzled.

But the main reason why I don’t know well these rules and their applications is that in my limited experience, if there is another ship, then it is a destroyer in 90% of the cases, and then the rule doesn’t apply at all.

[surfer]

@shadowhawk “In non-combat it’s not legal to do moves that could result in combat. Your moving sub into a hostile seazone.” == not correct.

“Unlike other sea units, submarines can move through and even into hostile sea zones in the Noncombat Move phase. However, a submarine must end its movement when it enters a sea zone containing one or more enemy destroyers.”

Why would you want to do this?

To disrupt the loading/unloading of troops and convoy ops.
Example: Allies own Java with transports and navy in the SZ 42 (Java waters). Japan sneaks a sub to SZ42 on non-combat. On the US turn, they wanted to take the inf in Java to defend Philippines but they want to use the DD to kill the sub. Here’s the problem, the amphib movement is a non-combat (US owns Philippines in this scenario) so the transport can’t move until the non-combat phase. However, if the DD attacks, all units in SZ42 at the time of combat are considered to be part of the attack, so the transport would be an “attacker” and at the end of combat would have it’s movement expended. Thus, either the transport leaves the area and could amphib attack some other hostile territory as this would be combat movement, or just hangout around Phillippines WITHOUT unloading.
Or, the US DD doesn’t attack the sub, it lives and gets to convoy Java.

Of course, this kind of situation is not common. But it is a consideration

Exact wording of applicable rule:
If your units are sharing a sea zone with only enemy submarines and/or transports (a friendly sea zone) and you want to ignore them, the normal rules of combat movement apply. However, if they are sharing a sea zone with enemy surface warships (a hostile sea zone), or you are attacking enemy submarines and/or transports there, each of your units must do one of the following:

Remain in the sea zone and conduct combat,
Leave the sea zone, load units if desired, and conduct combat elsewhere,
Leave the sea zone, either to load units or to establish a retreat route, and return to the same sea zone to conduct combat, or
Leave the sea zone and conduct no combat

Remember, you can only load units in friendly sea zones, so if this sea zone is hostile, you must load them elsewhere.

Once these sea units have moved and/or participated in combat, they can’t move or participate in the Noncombat Move phase of the turn.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@surfer

I never thought of it that way before. Thanks for the insight.

[Azimuth]

@surfer Thank you, very interesting.

It doesn’t exactly answer my questions, but still.

So to summarize (or rephrase) about your example:

• the initial plan is not blocked: it is still allowed to ignore the sub in SZ 42 during CM, and to load the Java unit and offload it to Philippines during NCM (sub don’t make a SZ hostile, so loading is allowed)
• but the japanese sub cannot be attacked (neither by warships in SZ 42, nor by neighboring fleets) without cancelling the transport’s ability to follow the plan (non-combat amphibious move)

Is that correct? And additionally, this all becomes irrelevant if the allies transport already carries units, right? (in that case, it can move during CM to avoid the battle with sub, and offload during NCM)

Sorry to say that this all sounds like an exploit… None of the detailed steps are - per se - forbidden by the rules. But the total manoeuver is disrupted because of its chronology - most probably not something that was initially intended.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@Azimuth

You’re mostly correct. I can’t speak to your last scenario.

There are a ton of little “loopholes” in the rules that allow for really clever maneuvers for very specific situations, like Great Southern Germany-Yugoslavia-Romania in one turn.

I trust that the designers considered many possibilities and that they intended for such a scenario to be possible.

[shadowhawk]

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Submerging before battle?:

@Azimuth

You’re mostly correct. I can’t speak to your last scenario.

There are a ton of little “loopholes” in the rules that allow for really clever maneuvers for very specific situations, like Great Southern Germany-Yugoslavia-Romania in one turn.

I trust that the designers considered many possibilities and that they intended for such a scenario to be possible.

I doubt that many of the rules where actually designed in a way to create these kinda loopholes. They are more build this way to make the game easier to play and more structured for beginners. The loopholes are just side effects that the designers either didnt think of or didnt think people would abuse as they are kinda illogical.

You retreat abuse, well how would you do it otherwise? how can you keep track of what unit came from where? its a lot of extra problems. Its much easier just saying everything retreats to the same country.
Older versions even had the rule that no land units could retreat from amfib combat ( even ones comming from land ) just to simplify things.

This is just another 1 of these things where your not allowed to mix non-combat and combat moves to make the game easier. Otherwise you would need to keep track of the things that already moved.

Logically it makes no sence that units cannot just move during the combat move step. It actualy makes the game a lot easier and faster to play if you are mixing both phases. But you have to keep track of your moves better.

[Krieghund]

@Azimuth said in Submerging before battle?:

So to summarize (or rephrase) about your example:

• the initial plan is not blocked: it is still allowed to ignore the sub in SZ 42 during CM, and to load the Java unit and offload it to Philippines during NCM (sub don’t make a SZ hostile, so loading is allowed)
• but the japanese sub cannot be attacked (neither by warships in SZ 42, nor by neighboring fleets) without cancelling the transport’s ability to follow the plan (non-combat amphibious move)

Is that correct?

Yes.

And additionally, this all becomes irrelevant if the allies transport already carries units, right? (in that case, it can move during CM to avoid the battle with sub, and offload during NCM)

No, it cannot. If the transport moves in combat movement and/or participates in combat, it cannot offload in noncombat movement, even if the land units were already on board at the beginning of the turn.

Sorry to say that this all sounds like an exploit… None of the detailed steps are - per se - forbidden by the rules. But the total manoeuver is disrupted because of its chronology - most probably not something that was initially intended.

It’s not disrupted by chronology as much as it is by the choice between attacking the submarine or moving the units. The ability of submarines to disrupt such movement is fully intended.

[Krieghund]

@shadowhawk said in Submerging before battle?:

I doubt that many of the rules where actually designed in a way to create these kinda loopholes. They are more build this way to make the game easier to play and more structured for beginners. The loopholes are just side effects that the designers either didnt think of or didnt think people would abuse as they are kinda illogical.

This is very true. There are a few “loopholes” that were created by attempting to keep the rules simple. However, there are also some complex interactions, such as those between submarines and other sea units, that are intended to make the strategy richer.

[Azimuth]

@Krieghund Thank you for these clarifications ;)

In between, I re-read all the complex rules about transports and submarines interactions and understood my mistake. And also understood that the above-described situation is a result of all these rules that is not easy to avoid without adding a lot of complexities and exceptions.

Nevertheless I persist to think that this is a loophole which exists to keep the rules coherent and “simple” (as perfectly described by @shadowhawk), not something intended for the richness of the interactions.

Or one should explain to me why (out of which principle), in the situation described above, the rules allow:

• On one hand to perform both a full scale amphibious assault (let’s say) into Western Australia with the transport+Java units and a sea battle against the sneaking sub
• But force to choose, on the other hand, between a “simple” reinforcement of the Philippines and attacking the sub.

(I am discussing these points because I find them interesting, not because I have any pretensions against the game rules or its developers - Please don’t get me wrong)

[Krieghund]

@Azimuth I never said the two didn’t overlap at points …

[surfer]

I would add that you can consider the sub rules as an exploitable loophole, but I would say they refect the very real problems subs caused in naval battles. One unaccounted sub could cause massive disruption to a naval force (hello HMS Ark Royal)