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Post by jwsmith26 on May 15, 2017 10:40:04 GMT -6
I've been experimenting with protected cruisers that have a very heavy secondary. I've seen comments in the forum that indicate that many people don't place much value on secondaries (or tertiaries) but I find them extremely useful. In my latest game I've equipped my CLs with 6" main guns and as many 5" secondaries as I can stuff onto the hull. After fighting several battles with these guys here's what I have found - the secondaries score just as many hits as the main guns and if they are big enough they do plenty of damage. The main arguments that I have seen raised against using such large secondaries has always been that 1. they interfere with the aim of the main guns and 2. why waste money on secondaries because they can't hit anything anyway. Here's my impression of these two objections. 1. Large secondaries absolutely do interfere with the spotting for the main guns, but if you examine the modifiers for the "to hit" system this amounts to a maximum modifier of -10. This is a relatively unimportant modification compared to the vast suite of negative modifiers to hit. For instance if more than one ship is firing at your target you can get up to a -30 modifier; Fireing at a ship that is end on to you (crossed T) can result in a -30 modifier; smoke in the area can generate up to a -60 (maybe more) modifier, if you or your target are turning you can easily rack up a -60 cumulative effect, even your fire control is generally a negative modifier. So a measly -10 modifier should not dissuade you from installing a big secondary. 2. Secondaries hit plenty. In my experience my CLs with a heavy secondary achieve an almost identical number of hits with their secondaries as with their main guns. (This applied as well to my CAs that have 10" main guns and 6" secondaries.) With CLs in particular, this can have a major multiplying effect on their firepower as there is little difference between 5" and 6" guns penetrative power vs other CLs. It will be interesting to see how these ships fare as they age. Here's an example of one such light cruiser showing the hits achieved in 3 different battles: Attachments:
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Post by Deleted on May 15, 2017 10:51:55 GMT -6
^i agree. secondaries do not jam, do not have individual restrictive fire arcs, do not go boom. this make them sometimes even more useful than main guns.
like ur CLs above. how many main guns have forward fire arcs, 1; how many secondaries have forward fire arcs, 2. after your A turret is knocked out, 0; after 8 of 9 secondaries knocked out on each side.. still 2!
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Post by oaktree on May 15, 2017 16:41:12 GMT -6
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. I purposefully design for fully enclosed turrets. And you can see examples in battle logs of "main gun crew cut down by splinters" and "secondary gun crews cut down by splinters" from shells exploding against the superstructure. Which is something my designs are trying to avoid.
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Post by Airy W on May 15, 2017 18:43:56 GMT -6
Acceptable losses man, they died to save their ship.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 15, 2017 19:04:04 GMT -6
Acceptable losses man, they died to save their ship. Good luck with that as your recruiting slogan, LOL.
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Post by Airy W on May 15, 2017 19:28:44 GMT -6
Good luck with that as your recruiting slogan, LOL. I dont need to recruit as many because my ships had another knot of speed meaning I brought more men home alive.
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Post by klavohunter on May 15, 2017 20:18:20 GMT -6
8000tonners fielding 14-16 7-8 guns with 1in armour all around with 4-6 TTs and 28-30kn. How?
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Post by beastro on May 16, 2017 3:49:04 GMT -6
8000tonners fielding 14-16 7-8 guns with 1in armour all around with 4-6 TTs and 28-30kn. How? Keeping them Protected Cruisers (Click on the layout area in the class designer, it allows you to select the classes layout if that's what you're wondering). The layout allows those caliber guns in singles while the Light Cruiser places a limit at 6in. In my experience armour isn't as huge a deal as knocking enemies out with CLs and their size acts in place of actual armour in absorbing damage but producing more room for flooding.
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Post by bcoopactual on May 16, 2017 7:16:00 GMT -6
beastro, what year tech-wise is that design?
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Post by director on May 16, 2017 10:29:24 GMT -6
My practical experience is that AI designed cruisers with 2" of armor or less have their mounts destroyed wholesale by my cruisers, whose 3-3.5" turret armor keeps my guns firing. So, I do agree that it is a great weight savings to reduce the turret armor. I'm just saying that it does not seem worth it to me.
Early protected cruisers don't have a long life-span for me. I only consider rebuilding PROTECTED cruisers if I have turbines, oil firing and light-cruiser armor schemes and don't have double or triple turrets.
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Post by Airy W on May 16, 2017 13:25:46 GMT -6
I'm just saying that it does not seem worth it to me. Here is a typical 1899 cruiser for me: If I were to increase those guns to 3" armor with 2" top without sacrificing anything but the surplus ammo it would put the design 548 tons overweight. To fix the design I would need to increase the tonnage from 3500 to 5100. A cost of 12.9 million becomes a cost of 18.1 million. If I was willing to sacrifice a knot of speed I could do it at 4500 tons for 15.1 million but I think that knot of speed severely degrades the effectiveness and the survivability of the ship. These small, light cruisers don't win glory but they win wars. In large battles they are very effective at scouts, destroyers aren't a threat to them and they can maintain distance with cruisers. In small engagements they can maintain combat and exchange rounds at long range. And sometimes they land a lucky hit and cripple a ship much large then them, allowing them to move in for the kill. If I lose a gun turret that sucks but it's acceptable losses. My ship still has it's speed so 250 men will return home safely to drink to the memory of the 10 who perished. Whereas losing the speed advantage is fatal. If you lose the speed advantage you are going to lose a lot more then a turret. I am more then happy to lose 4 marginal defeats in a row if it doesn't cost me any ships. The battles that I want to get into are hunting enemy raiders by my colonies. The enemy cruisers don't have destroyers so once you slow down the enemy you can win a major victory. If your flagship takes hits early on, you can safely withdraw to repair (or even swap flagships if you have redundancy). Even if the enemy does escape there is a high chance they scuttle or intern. Single greatest type of engagement to get in. These guys free up money to buy the armored cruisers for those battles. They also are good to have as backups. I always have at least one of these in every big colonial seazone. So if my flagship takes an unlucky hit, I have one of these to cover the retreat. Beat the enemy raiders then blockade their home port or invade their colonies. That's how you win wars.
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Post by brucesim2003 on May 16, 2017 18:45:31 GMT -6
There is room to save weight in that design.
1: Reduce the deck to 1". Most guns of the ships these will be fighting won't get through 1" any more than 1.5", so the extra 0.5" just sucks up weight without purpose. 2: Reduce the 2 quarterdeck guns to 1. Two on the bow make sense if you are chasing the enemy, but I find 2 on the quarterdeck doesn't have the same impact, seeing as if you are faster than the enemy and need to run, you will soon be out of range. Anything you can't outrun you might as well turn and fight. 3: Drop the torps. Early torps are not worth the risk of flooded torpedo rooms, which you will invariably get with the thin armour that CL's have.
With the weight gained, you could increase speed by a knot, 22kts being what I class as minimum required cruiser speed. The AI will build a lot of 20-21kt CL's in their legacy fleet, and for quite a while afterwards, and 21kts just doesn't cut it for a patrol cruiser, and a raider cannot reliably escape at that speed either.
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Post by ramjb on May 17, 2017 0:22:53 GMT -6
I rarely go over 6000 tons for my CLs. I build them in batches as tech improves, first designs are PCs of some 4k tons and as tech advances I increase tonnage as needed for sucessive batches. Aim is to have a reasonable balance of firepower, protection and speed in a reasonable size so I rarely aim for extremes in either of them. As time goes by older batches get sent off to colonial duty.
The 6k limit is a self-imposed rule. Anything bigger tends to be too much for the scouting/Screening job, which is what I want my CLs for. Besides, for light ships having them in bigger numbers usually is better than having less of them in bigger size. Given that I build them in batches that usually comes into play, I'd rather have 4 6000 tonners than 3 8000 tonners.
I don't bother with raiders at all, so all my CLs are oriented to fleet actions.
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Post by konstantinua00 on May 17, 2017 6:57:10 GMT -6
I found myself not building any CLs till the endgame, when they become destroyer leaders That's why my CLs are mostly torpedo-focused and fast
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Post by jwsmith26 on May 17, 2017 9:52:14 GMT -6
I never build raider CLs either; they are all oriented toward fleet battles with a secondary role as colony garrisons. These are the CLs I mentioned earlier in this thread that have a heavy secondary as well as 24 kt speed. Since starting a game in which I plan to build no capital ships I have lost only one of my 6 original CLs (to a torpedo hit) but I have sunk 14 enemy CLS (as well as 25 DDs, 8 CAs and 7 Bs).
I guess it depends on what you want from your CLs. A small fast CL will serve well in many roles, such as scouting and raiding, but they seldom kill enemy warships and that's the primary goal I set for my CLs. They can still scout and serve as colony protectors but if one encounters an enemy light cruiser their job is to kill that cruiser. Sure they are expensive, but I rather lose one expensive CL than 14 smaller ones.
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