I understand that without a destroyer any attacking air units cannot hit submarines. Which also means as a defender I cannot assign hits from air units to submarines.
Isn’t this a huge drawback if I, for example, use submarines to soak up damage in sea combat but would be unable to do so if the opponent doesn’t have any destroyers and therefor I would have to assign hits to more valuable units?

The destroyers ability to make my subs visible should be a drawback. Why can’t the defender just order the subs to surface? From a tactical point of view this just makes no sense to me.

@general-6-stars said in [1942 2nd ] Submarine/Air Unit rule actually a drawback?:

The problem is destroyers cost to much and subs to cheap.

I think thats the essence of the problem. In real life submarines are far more expensive than destroyers. But then their role is also less impactful in the game which kinda justifies the low cost.

Giving surface ships AA capabilities would put more pressure on air units in naval battles. This would also reflect reality a bit better since ships were outfitted with countless anti air guns.

@aardvarkpepper said in Submarine/Air Unit rule actually a drawback?:

@megatron said in Submarine/Air Unit rule actually a drawback?:

I understand that without a destroyer any attacking air units cannot hit submarines. Which also means as a defender I cannot assign hits from air units to submarines.
Isn’t this a huge drawback if I, for example, use submarines to soak up damage in sea combat but would be unable to do so if the opponent doesn’t have any destroyers and therefor I would have to assign hits to more valuable units?

The destroyers ability to make my subs visible should be a drawback. Why can’t the defender just order the subs to surface? From a tactical point of view this just makes no sense to me.

Imagine two carriers four fighters are attacked by four submarines two fighters. Submarines fight best by submerging to avoid enemy attacks. It would not make sense that the submarines leap out of the ocean into the path of enemy guns.

It’s not great that submarines are invincible either, but if one has to pick and choose, I’d say it’s not that bad.

In the above scenario, instead of attacking with four submarines two fighters, the attacker could just go in with four submarines against two carriers, ignoring the defending fighters.

But there’s any number of different situations, which may involve the defender deliberately taking destroyers as casualties early to manipulate how hits must be later allocated? Or attack/defense compositions could be given that are quite different to my example?

Yes, absolutely. But again, we’re looking at submarines submerging, or submarines sort of leaping out of the ocean, and if a simple rule is to be made universal, which should be chosen? Or what other simple solution should there be?

That kinda gives me different thoughts about. I think the role of the submarine as a surprise attack unit that is usually able to just avoid damage at all instead of being cannon fodder because its by balancing “unfortunately” the cheapest sea unit makes more sense.
That said, ships should still have much more defensive capabilities against air units than they have now. Maybe giving +1 def against air, or a one time roll like an AA has.

But I would like to stay as vanilla as possible. So maybe making the destroyers ability optional would be interesting as @vodot mentioned. Not sure how strongly this affects balancing though.

@general-5-stars I don’t quite follow. The battleship IS the key piece being attacked in that scenario. Yet if the attacker adds a destroyer he will have a disadvantage since the air unit hits can be assigned to the subs. Now if one sub returns fire and the battleship hits as well the attacker loses a fighter without doing any damage to the battleship. That means for round two its one fighter against an undamaged battleship with losses of 18 ICP and a 90% win rate for the defender.

Without a destroyer in the attacking army it would be a 50% win rate since the defender cannot assign any hits to subs.

So chances are extremely high that the battleship wont be lost if there IS a destroyer in the attacking army.

(The destroyer cannot be fodder for the battleship if the defending subs score a hit which is the whole point of my problem)

@general-5-stars I think I did not clarify this well enough.
I am saying, in that case, as an attacker with air units I would not want to hit any subs.

Here is a scenario:
Attacker has 2 fighters. Defender has 1 battleship and 6 subs.
This would be about a 50% chance the battleship is lost. It’s the only unit that can be assigned hits to.
If the Attacker sent one destroyer with the planes he would be at a disadvantage. Because now the subs can be used as casualties since they are “visible” to the planes which would give the defender an advantage.

The problem I am having is that I cannot order subs to be visible to planes. Neither can I order a destroyer not to make submarines surface.

It just seems like a nonsensical rule to me (ignoring balancing issues for now)

@general-5-stars No, im not asking about first strike or other sea units. I was talking about air units in sea combat and how they can or cannot hit subs depending on destroyers being present in the army. (See my initial question)

@tincanofthesea It can get even worse. An attacker can choose not to send destroyers but subs to the battle. Which means he can pick off my expensive sea units because I cant choose subs as casualties. Now if I happen to have destroyers in the battle group which I can’t just exclude from the battle he, on the other hand, would be able to assign hits to his subs.

Either I misunderstood the rules even after reading through the forums and the rulebook several times but it seems to me just having destroyers in an army can be a devastating disadvantage in some scenarios.

I understand that without a destroyer any attacking air units cannot hit submarines. Which also means as a defender I cannot assign hits from air units to submarines.
Isn’t this a huge drawback if I, for example, use submarines to soak up damage in sea combat but would be unable to do so if the opponent doesn’t have any destroyers and therefor I would have to assign hits to more valuable units?

The destroyers ability to make my subs visible should be a drawback. Why can’t the defender just order the subs to surface? From a tactical point of view this just makes no sense to me.