Subs or carriers?

[Ace Rimmer]

Ace, that wasn't my point. My point was more general in nature.
You take me for teh n00b?

(actually, the place in your screenies is mostly where the naval battle would be at, if Russia and Asia placed some parts of their fleet in the Pacific, so definitely a lousy spot to surface in at defcon 1 )

Naah, and I agree with placing subs at defcon 5 and placing them first, unless you're going to scout with ships first. In fact it's in my script for the Defcon tutorial. I just meant to show that it's not necessary in most cases to get into enemy waters to hit coastal cities with subs.

Edit: and to also show the proximity and range of subs which from spectating it seems that most don't take into account. I like to get my subs just barely in range of whatever target I'm going for. Hugging the enemy coastline is not my style unless I know its safe and want to maximize the number of potential targets.

[Chimaera]

Thanks for this, but I was already aware of it. My qualm with this tactic is the fact that I tend to forget about my subs. This has led to extremely embarassing situations where I go back to the original purpose of the subs I had envisaged at defcon 5, disregarding the changes of the political landscape since then: I actually nuked Tokyo before, not realising he was the same colour as me until my score started plummeting.

The reaon I like to use my subs very early on while they are still close to my shores is so I can take full advantage of my own homeland defence system - ie, any bombers sent to deal with the subs launching at New York from the Mid Atlantic will be detected by my homeland RADAR and quickly eliminated by my carrier fighters. And the psychological hit that less experienced players will take when their major cities are glassed minutes after the klaxon that heralds defcon one sounds from the unseen meance of the ocean can lead them into turtling rather than preparing a full-scale retaliation.

[torig]

Naah, and I agree with placing subs at defcon 5 and placing them first, unless you're going to scout with ships first. In fact it's in my script for the Defcon tutorial. I just meant to show that it's not necessary in most cases to get into enemy waters to hit coastal cities with subs.

True, but during the naval battle you'll want to hang around the coasts somewhere and then move back (once the carriers get back in to sweep the coast).
Obviously, you should only do this with sufficient intel on the navy you're crossing

[Ace Rimmer]

I also like to unload subs as early as possible to get them in the naval fight. In my example, I only placed those two subs and didn't even ping once. I just surfaced and fired. Now, the CPU isn't a human player, but I've seen human players play just as poor as the CPU. The two subs were never fired upon.

As a side note, I almost never have the sound on.