There is an ASW-SS balancing project now in Test Server, check out the Test Server Discussion section for more info.

In the mean time, stick to fast FF/DD and DCs or HH/PHH 

Any CL with sonar, autoFCS, HH and lvl 40 gunners can get subs. Pratice for a week and get more subs.   Place PHH on all gun ports and its like shooting fish in a barrell.  PHH have longer range than ss torps, so the sub can never damage your boat, unless you let it get near.


Other boats with sonar: CV's, DD, FF and of course other subs.

   

Get an Owl.

Itsnt Woddie ?

The most challenging and arguably the funnest ship in ASW is the FF-Y using depth charges.

The ability to sink a sub with depth charges is a lot more difficult than just flinging PHH from 10 ship lengths away and well outside the range of the torpedoes.

Take an FF-Y, load up a sonarman and side & rear racks of depth charges a couple of gunners and go hunting.

or you can take the lazy way out and load up a fully armored CL as mentioned above and just throw HH willy-nilly at everything that moves.  At least you'll be able to inflict damage on other ships with your HH (nuclear cluster bombs).       

I agree with  ultradog.


I got an FFY when I first started playing this game and I still have it and use it.


It is the most challenging way to ASW as ultradog says.   It is a duel to the death at close range between you and a sub.    Very reminicent of many of the old time sub movies such as "The enemy below".

It takes luck and real skill to consistently sink subs this way.   When you face T3 and above subs, you have a very powerful and obviously a skill ful opponent.   They wouldn't be at those levels if they didn't know how to fight and survive.


As ultradog says...it could be the funnest ship in NF.     I tend to agree.   


With high lvl neuts as a crew...this is a great little ship.                  

dont need auto fcs for HH, since all nations & both PHH & normal ones use the same angles,
i'd say HH are the most easy weapon to learn angles pretty quick.
the only thing against it is the spread at lower lvls (but that only increases with auto aim). 

With the ffy you'll need some neutrals for the depth charges.  keep that in mind.  I've run my ffy with rear racks for so long that i have a pair of lvl 50 neutral +12 torpedo sailors.

you won't have much displacement to work with and you shouldn't be overheating.  So a low level nationed elite engy would give you good normal speed.  then you'll only need a bo (keep it light and low), and the neutral torper.  You really only need one sailor to drop dc because you won't be using the midship dc's much.  So you only need the one torp sailor.  As an afterthought, you might consider a good ebve low level sonarman, the ff will spot subs but a good sonarman helps.

Ship Setup:

Rear DC only

Armor (none, you're using rear dc's so you won't need bulge, neut armor = useless anyway)

Crew Setup:

BO (something very light)

Gunners (none)

Torpedoman (neutral with good torpedoman stat, only need 1)

Sonarman (something light with good ability, not necessary to have but helps spot further)

Engineer (something light with good ability, also not necessary but helps)