Are there favored CL designs among the players?

[oaktree]

I came into the game partially by following play-throughs on YouTube.  One thing I picked up from one of the series by Tortuga (hat-tip to you sir!) is that my light cruiser designs tend to fall into a similar pattern from game to game.

Essentially I build a all-6" gun light cruiser of around 6,000t displacement and having a 5-6 gun broadside.  Armor is pretty much a standard 2.5 belt, 2.0 deck, 2.5 turrets, 2.0 turret roof.  A few torpedo tubes, and then I see about getting a speed fast enough to get away from beginning game CA and catch beginning game CL of other nations.  As the tech improves I try to build faster variants, switch to sloped deck (light cruiser) armor scheme, and then start exchanging out pairs of wing turrets for more centerline turrets.  This evolutionary pattern continues until late game when I go "3rd generation" and start building cruisers with four twin-6" turrets and AON armor scheme on roughly the same displacement and cost. (IIRC, usual cost is about 22M/ship.)

And given the AI preference for 2x6" 10x4" and 12x4" (or 12x5") designs it seems that a solid all-6" cruiser has a distinct advantage.

The armor standard is based on a few things.  First, the 2.5" belt is good early on against 3", 4" and even 5" to some degree.  Good for fighting against destroyers, and sufficient against other light cruisers.  Secondly, the 2" deck is minimum to reduce splinter damage and also helps against medium caliber plunging fire.  Thirdly, the 2.5"/2" turret armor generates a fully-enclosed turret which once again protects against splinter damage to the gun crews.

Plus, when playing the smaller powers, I often keep even the old CLs around for a very long time.  A rebuild converts them into minelayers and they still have some value as patrol ships and convoy escorts.  It's also possible to convert the non-protected cruiser armor variants to use 2-gun turrets if desired.  

These ships seem to be superior to the foreign power CLs one-on-one for most of the game.  And at parity even in the late-game after everyone is building 6-gun or 8-gun light cruisers using 2-gun centerline turrets.  

I am curious what the standards are for the other players since to me the light cruiser is a workhorse ship type that you want efficient designs to be around in numbers to carry out the myriad tasks they have.  And often early wars are heavily light cruiser actions and raider intercepts between the rare large battleship clashes.

Samples attached of an start-of-game and then a 1911 version of the general type.

Attachments:

[JagdFlanker]

i use start game CL's exclusively for scouting in home waters, but of course sometimes you get CL vs CL battles as well as raider intercepts - i always win both

[bcoopactual]

My starting designs are very similar.  I don't put as much armor weight on the deck in my legacy designs because combat has to take place at such close range so I put that weight into turret armor but otherwise it's very similar.  The game's format prioritizes quality over quantity but I believe that the legacy templates for the AI are more representative of historical designs which is why I believe the 6,000+ ton player cruiser always has the advantage in the early game until the AI reacts to it.

Here are my legacy designs from the latest game.  

[oaktree]

May 13, 2017 17:49:26 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

My starting designs are very similar.  I don't put as much armor weight on the deck in my legacy designs because combat has to take place at such close range so I put that weight into turret armor but otherwise it's very similar.  The game's format prioritizes quality over quantity but I believe that the legacy templates for the AI are more representative of historical designs which is why I believe the 6,000+ ton player cruiser always has the advantage in the early game until the AI reacts to it.

Here are my legacy designs from the latest game.  

How noticeable is the ROF penalty on the 2-gun fore/aft turrets?

[bcoopactual]

It starts out at 20% for twin turrets under 9 inches.

If I remember, when I don't ship twin turrets fore and aft and use single turrets fore and aft instead, I can add one single gun wing turret on each side.  So broadside guns go down by one (5 vs. 6). If my math is right two guns at 80% ROF gives you the same as 1.6 guns at 100% ROF so I think the twin gun turrets are better in general.  For my ships it works out to 5.2 guns vs. 5 guns per broadside if I went all single mounts. So not much difference but evey lit bit helps when your accuracy sucks. Until you lose the turret to being disabled or destroyed. That's always the tradeoff of putting more guns in one mount.

As a note, later in the game there are a couple of techs you research that reduce that ROF penalty to 10% and then 0 (reliable and then improved power training and elevation gear respectively in 1914 and 1920) but your legacy designs will probably be scrapped by then.

[klavohunter]

For capital ship support and random engagements in home waters, I cut my CLs down to the bone for cost savings. They're still pretty effective.

This time around I decided to make my starting CLs Cross-deck-fire ready, a quick upgrade after my first war is keeping them dangerous.



Those Protected Cruisers with 8" guns are pretty tempting in the early game if I feel the need for a super-CL to stomp enemy CLs with.
Sometimes, for the hell of it, I'll make tiny 2100-ton CLs in the late-game that also have 4x8" main guns, as a kind of a joke.

[director]

My earliest cruiser designs tend to fall into two classes, sea control and raiding.

For control of the seas - since a lot of missions revolve around CL clashes - my early design is a 6500-7000 ton protected cruiser with twin turrets for and aft, as many 6" as I can put along the waist (and yes, I do use cross-deck fire when I get it), 2.5" belt and at least 3" armor on turrets, and 23 knots speed.

For raiding I use a minimal armament, perhaps 4-4" guns, with paper armor, maximum speed (23-24 knots) and, if I need it, long range.

The design challenge gets acute when turbines and light-cruiser armor scheme come in, since you lose the ability to make twin turrets. I still favor bigger light cruisers with 1-3 knot speed superiority over foreign designs. I have tried using a heavy all-6" armament, and reducing the waist guns in favor of 4" secondaries. My conclusion is that a uniform 6" armament is usually better, mostly because the enemy seems to stay with 4" and 5" guns for some time.

If you want to consistently score points, especially if your battle-fleet isn't up to preventing a blockade, then superiority of quality in light cruisers and destroyers will get you a lot of victories. It's a good idea to keep a few big, powerful armored cruisers, too - at least until the BCs start rolling in.

[garrisonchisholm]

May 14, 2017 8:18:46 GMT -6 director said:

If you want to consistently score points, especially if your battle-fleet isn't up to preventing a blockade, then superiority of quality in light cruisers and destroyers will get you a lot of victories. It's a good idea to keep a few big, powerful armored cruisers, too - at least until the BCs start rolling in.

This is so very true.  In my best game as Japan I built 15 mid-game CL's (@7900 tons) which mounted 15x6" and nominal armor, and they wiped the seas of everything they faced, and many VPs came in.  In my current AAR as Poland, I tried to make my original PC (4x8" @ 4600 tons) a design which would carry forward into the 30's, but despite quite ample turret armor the hull protection was just too outdated to amount to much of anything at all, and they are now worth little more than anti-blockade tonnage.

[boomboomf22]

May 14, 2017 14:23:14 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

May 14, 2017 8:18:46 GMT -6 director said:

If you want to consistently score points, especially if your battle-fleet isn't up to preventing a blockade, then superiority of quality in light cruisers and destroyers will get you a lot of victories. It's a good idea to keep a few big, powerful armored cruisers, too - at least until the BCs start rolling in.

This is so very true.  In my best game as Japan I built 15 mid-game CL's (@7900 tons) which mounted 15x6" and nominal armor, and they wiped the seas of everything they faced, and many VPs came in.  In my current AAR as Poland, I tried to make my original PC (4x8" @ 4600 tons) a design which would carry forward into the 30's, but despite quite ample turret armor the hull protection was just too outdated to amount to much of anything at all, and they are now worth little more than anti-blockade tonnage.

I find that most early game PC just don't age well, especially without and engine rebuild to at least 28kts (usually only achievable if they went 24/23 originally).  I tend to rebuild them to expend as raiders or if I really can't spare the time to totally replace them with new ships

[babylon218]

May 14, 2017 17:16:01 GMT -6 boomboomf22 said:

May 14, 2017 14:23:14 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

This is so very true.  In my best game as Japan I built 15 mid-game CL's (@7900 tons) which mounted 15x6" and nominal armor, and they wiped the seas of everything they faced, and many VPs came in.  In my current AAR as Poland, I tried to make my original PC (4x8" @ 4600 tons) a design which would carry forward into the 30's, but despite quite ample turret armor the hull protection was just too outdated to amount to much of anything at all, and they are now worth little more than anti-blockade tonnage.

I find that most early game PC just don't age well, especially without and engine rebuild to at least 28kts (usually only achievable if they went 24/23 originally).  I tend to rebuild them to expend as raiders or if I really can't spare the time to totally replace them with new ships

I've actually experimented with legacy 24kn CLs in my latest game as Britain.  2 6" guns with 8 4" guns in casements.

They suck.  They suck so bad that immediately after my first battle with a Russian Cruiser I revised the design to a 6 6" design and am currently rebuilding the entire Comus Class (about 16 ships [not all at once, of course]) to replace the 4" casemates with 5" turrets (I somehow managed to not only up-gun the design, but actually increase the secondary battery to 8-10 guns in unarmoured turrets).

On the bright side, they're so fast that I'm just slaughtering Russia's auxiliary cruisers and destroyers, and when I come across something I can't outgun, I can just turn and flee.

[boomboomf22]

Yah to avoid gimped ships the 24kt 1899 PCs have to be in my experience around 7000 tons, and thus very expensive. The speed keeps them useful longer tho, and can force the AI to build gimped 4" cruisers to keep up in speed while sticking to the seeming desire of the AI to build around 5500 ton or less ships

[Airy W]

A 6x10 CL with a pair of submerged torpedo mounts is a fantastic ship in 1900. Just make sure that you put the guns in 1,2,3,4 configuration not in A,Z configuration. There are three critical displacements to consider. 2100 is the minimum weight and is rather efficient but cant have submerged torpedoes. 2600 is the minimum weight for torpedoes so is a bit inefficient. And then 3500 or so is the weight to be able to outrun your enemies.

All my CL designs are like this in the early game. Then comes the period where CLs kinda suck because destroyers and fire control jump ahead while CLs languish. But then a bunch of new technologies come along and I build a whole new generation of CLs with centerline guns and deck torpedoes.

One problem I see with the design in the OP is that the turrets are too heavily armored.  If the turrets have more then 2 inch of armor, they are full turrets.  If they have 2 inches or less of armor they are deck guns in splinter protection.  The latter is a major weight savings.  For light cruisers, you need to consider it.

[tortugapower]

May 14, 2017 23:16:43 GMT -6 Airy W said:

One problem I see with the design in the OP is that the turrets are too heavily armored.  If the turrets have more then 2 inch of armor, they are full turrets.  If they have 2 inches or less of armor they are deck guns in splinter protection.  The latter is a major weight savings.  For light cruisers, you need to consider it.

Argh, that's a really important point! I've been designing my ships "wrong" for a while then...

(I put it in quotes until I see how big of a difference it makes -- maybe it's still justifiable).

[beastro]

8000tonners fielding 14-16 7-8 guns with 1in armour all around with 4-6 TTs and 28-30kn.

The function of them is to provide overwhelming heavy fire against CLs and other cruisers whiling remaining good support fire against cap ships. No enemy CL model can stand against them and most CAs can't until modern 6-8 8in ones start being fielded (and we all know they're rare).

They're less effective against DDs, but all the they need is one good hit to knock those out and compliment my own DDs and my cap ships secondary and tertiary guns which I cram them with. What they lack for in armour is made up for in mass, they have a lot of room to flood and by the time they are in that state speed isn't a big thing, I can relegate them to other roles in a battle, like making finishing passes with torps against cripples.

All of this I developed and honed because I became sick of how weak 6in guns are in the game where I'd dance and dive with enemy CLs only to run low on ammo and have only chewed them up. This way they get chunks taken out of them and knock outs come quick and sudden.

After that I emphasize torpedo armament to make them the center of my torpedo cavalry wing scaling the 7-8in guns to as many 5in ones that I can fit so they can function more as a DD screen as torpedoes become more dangerous. While this shift takes place they switch with DDs where the DDs also take on as many torps as they can pack but their guns get pushed to 6 6iners. the ROF penalty is not a penalty, DDs are terribly wasteful with ammo, and given this games ineffective fire control discipline, having slow, hard hitting DD guns is a good thing.

The only exception to all of this was a class of 12 6200 CLs I made for station work originally equipped with 6 6in guns in single mounts. They weren't all that great as built and ran into trouble when they found themselves up against proper warships, so they got a refit like more early 1920s cruisers did IRL and came out wearing several designs that made them very good anti-raider ships as well as my main mine layers.

[bcoopactual]

May 14, 2017 23:16:43 GMT -6 Airy W said:

One problem I see with the design in the OP is that the turrets are too heavily armored.  If the turrets have more then 2 inch of armor, they are full turrets.  If they have 2 inches or less of armor they are deck guns in splinter protection.  The latter is a major weight savings.  For light cruisers, you need to consider it.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, you may have the same idea as me but the way I read the manual, 2 inches or less armor on 6 inch main gun mounts (or lesser caliber) are shielded mounts that I always pictured in my head as something like so:

   From the Navweaps website.  There are examples that a google image search can find where the protection is more like 3/4's (everything but the rear of the mount and the loaders are protected so the picture is just one example.

Per the manual they are more protected against splinters than unarmored mounts but they are still vulnerable to splinters.  Here is the applicable section of the manual:


 So others can take a look and see if they interpret the manual differently.  

I will say that I always try to armor my turrets as much as I can but I also generally only build larger CL's (6,000 tons and above) so I acknowledge that that isn't necessarily an option for smaller protected/light cruisers.