Super - Cruiser Discussion

[generalvikus]

One thing that has stuck out to me when perusing these forums is the existence of a completely unique type of ship with no real life counterpart that I am aware of. From ccip's Furutaka, Tokiwa, and Izumo (best ship designs, page 3) to eserchie's fabled Spartiates (best ship designs, page 11) which sparked much discussion in that thread, to garrisonchisholm's recently posted Charles Etiennes, which have provoked a lively discussion of their own in recent days, there seems to be a distinct group of ‘super cruisers’ that are widely used by members of this community.


Generally, these super cruisers tend to displace approximately 20,000 tonnes, or about twice the maximum displacement for cruisers allowed by the London Treaty. They carry cruiser sized guns – 8 to 10 inches – but have many more guns and thicker armour than heavy cruisers. They are not, it seems, built to outrun the battlecruisers of their time, but to outgun other cruisers.

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of the super-cruiser. Whereas garrison’s recent thread is specifically directed at his ‘late game cruiser philosophy’ and is centred on a response to his particular class of super-cruiser, I’d like to open up a wider discussion of this unique and interesting type of vessel, which after all has been employed by various players in the early, middle and late game, and which, as we have seen, is subject to many competing design philosophies.


I am a very new player, with only a single completed and a single half-completed game under my belt. I therefore feel that I personally have a lot to learn from this discussion, but I’m sure the whole community could also benefit from a good debate on this issue.


I am particularly interested in hearing the opinions of the proponents of the super-cruiser, as I independently considered but wholeheartedly rejected the concept during my first playthrough. My view on these ships is that a 20,000 ton cruiser is no cheaper than a light battlecruiser, but that even a late-game super-cruiser would fall victim to a first-generation battlecruiser, which it would be unable to outrun. Since these ships are generally no faster than contemporary battlecruisers, it seems to me that an investment in a battlecruiser of comparable tonnage would always be more desirable than an investment in a super-cruiser.


However, with only my historical knowledge to go on in my first game as the USA, I was determined to avoid battlecruisers as well. The prevalence of cruiser engagements during that game (which did not see a single capital ship engagement) led me to develop the beginnings of my own unique doctrine in the middle of the game – a large fleet of ~ 10,000 ton, =/> 30 knot heavy cruisers would fulfil the anti-cruiser role while being capable of outrunning all contemporary battlecruisers. Meanwhile, at roughly the same time, I adopted fast battleships with a speed of 24 knots – jumping up to 28 knots in the final BB class – to render the relatively slow foreign battlecruisers built up to that time obsolete.


Sadly, this doctrine was never properly tested. After a long series of disappointing skirmishes with Italy, Germany, and France, I (Allied with Britian) entered a period of prolonged tensions with Germany (revolutionized after their early defeat,) Italy and Japan. The IJN launched their surprise attack in December 1924, offering a perfect start to what I hoped would develop into a perfect World War II scenario. Unfortunately, Japan surrendered in February 1925 with no other powers having joined their side, after which I ended the game. 

My experience with cruiser engagements during this game has convinced me to experiment tentatively with battlecruisers in my second game, this time playing as Germany. In the game I play after that, I hope to more fully develop my combined fast heavy cruiser / fast battleship doctrine. It has also occurred to me to experiment with my own variation of the super-cruiser concept: a ‘fast pocket battleship’ capable of outrunning contemporary battlecruisers while fulfilling the anti-cruiser and raiding roles; built in the mid to late game, and utilizing 10 – 13 inch guns to be an effective antidote to enemy heavy cruisers without requiring the huge investment of a battlecruiser. I have never seen this concept tried on the forums before, so once I have made that attempt – perhaps I will find room for an experimental version to serve alongside my battlecruisers in my current game – it should make a valuable contribution to this discussion.


In the meantime, I can see no value in the existing super-cruiser concept; after all, I live by the maxim – ‘bigger than anything faster and faster than anything bigger’ and the super-cruiser, as it now exists, is ‘bigger than anything smaller and slower than many things bigger.’ I would love to hear some counter-arguments, so with that I shall yield the floor.

EDIT #2: (Corrected earlier mistake in caption)


Above: The USS Rochester, hailing from my first game, exemplifies my current design philosophy; not blazingly fast by historical standards, but able to keep pace with all its contemporaries, with a modest cost. By the time of my final war with Japan in 1924-25, I was still the only country with heavy cruisers, with the Rochester joined by two earlier ships of the Des Moines Class. 

[garrisonchisholm]

One of the virtues of CAs over BCs - especially if ordered from an advanced industry - is build time. If you intend to build 6 of a class and can afford 2 at a time, you could have them done a year faster than BCs if things work out, which gives you time with which to refit other ships or build a DD class. "Super Cruisers" are a treaty response option too, because while an 18,000 ton BC isn't a very long lived idea, an 18,000 ton heavy cruiser might just be.

Operationally, I have gotten fantastic usage out of these ships when deployed to SEA where FR/GR/US/JP frequently do not have the logistics in place to put overwhelming force. Shore Bombardment, cruiser intercept, coastal raids, raider interception all seem to happen quite frequently. I also see it as a function of turning time into tonnage and in a small scenario having the firepower to overwhelm the opposition. Even my CLs have 6x15 armament. Landing more hits sooner seems to me the biggest factor in cruiser warfare.

The thing is a slow Heavy Cruiser is going to need either an expensive & possibly unjustifiable refit or a deft realization of when it is time for them to police quiet pastures. They *must* be able to outrun BCs or their service lives are going to be spent avoiding sea zones where BCs prowl.

As an example, since I started my recent game with CAs neither fast nor strong, and not being able to order DNs yet, in 1902 I ordered 2 of these from the USA which were delivered just in time for my war with France;

They have already proven themselves in action, being faster and more powerful (7.1" guns) than anything France has yet.  I expect in 8-12 years though one will have a close call with a BC, and so I will then need to deploy them carefully or withdraw them from service.  However that 21 month build time came in handy, and allowed them to decisively win my first action.

[generalvikus]

Sept 3, 2017 3:54:52 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

One of the virtues of CAs over BCs - especially if ordered from an advanced industry - is build time. If you intend to build 6 of a class and can afford 2 at a time, you could have them done a year faster than BCs if things work out, which gives you time with which to refit other ships or build a DD class. "Super Cruisers" are a treaty response option too, because while an 18,000 ton BC isn't a very long lived idea, an 18,000 ton heavy cruiser might just be.

Operationally, I have gotten fantastic usage out of these ships when deployed to SEA where FR/GR/US/JP frequently do not have the logistics in place to put overwhelming force. Shore Bombardment, cruiser intercept, coastal raids, raider interception all seem to happen quite frequently. I see it as a function of turning time into tonnage and in a small scenario having the firepower to overwhelm the opposition. Even my CLs have 6x15 armament. Landing more hits sooner seems to me the biggest factor in cruiser warfare.

The thing is a slow Heavy Cruiser is going to need either an expensive & possibly unjustifiable refit or a deft realization of when it is time for them to police quiet pastures. They *must* be able to outrun BCs or their service lives are going to e spent avoiding sea zones where BCs prowl.

Thanks for the response - all that information is the kind of practical information I expect you can only get from experience rather than theory, just what I was looking for. 

[rimbecano]

There were a few super-cruiser type ships in real life: the German Panzerschiffe, the Scharnhorst class, and the Alaskas. The latter two types have been called "Battlecruisers", and all three would be classified as BCs in RTW on account of gun size, but none of them had anything that qualified as capital ship armament for the WWII era (or even the 1920s, had the naval treaties not happened). The Panzerschiffe had just the problem you describe, by the time the war came along, there were just too many battleships (let alone BCs) that could keep pace with them or outrun them. I'm not quite sure why the Germans failed to foresee this.

My super-cruisers tend to be a few knots faster than my BCs, and armed with 10" guns if I have them in decent quality. They're often a response to a specific enemy class, and I don't build many.

[generalvikus]

Sept 3, 2017 4:38:50 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

There were a few super-cruiser type ships in real life: the German Panzerschiffe, the Scharnhorst class, and the Alaskas. The latter two types have been called "Battlecruisers", and all three would be classified as BCs in RTW on account of gun size, but none of them had anything that qualified as capital ship armament for the WWII era (or even the 1920s, had the naval treaties not happened). The Panzerschiffe had just the problem you describe, by the time the war came along, there were just too many battleships (let alone BCs) that could keep pace with them or outrun them. I'm not quite sure why the Germans failed to foresee this.

My super-cruisers tend to be a few knots faster than my BCs, and armed with 10" guns if I have them in decent quality. They're often a response to a specific enemy class, and I don't build many.

The Panzerschliffes were intentionally designed to be weaker than the Allied battleships - not that the German Navy preferred it that way. They were simply an effort to build the best ship that could be built under the Versailles restrictions, not an effort to find a niche that they could fill better than anything else. That does not excuse the Kreigsmarine, which soon enough had every opportunity to build anything it wanted, and squandered that opportunity utterly. After the First World War, there was absolutely no excuse for believing that large surface vessels could produce even a fraction of the results that U-boats could achieve for a much lower cost.  

[aeson]

There's also the 17000t standard displacements Des Moines class heavy cruisers which entered service with the USN shortly after the end of the Second World War.

Within the game, I am very ambivalent about such vessels; both the (light) battle cruiser or large cruiser and the ships generalvikus calls super-cruisers have similar roles, with the super-cruisers essentially being the 'quantity' option while the battle cruisers represent the 'quality' option. I tend to feel that quality matters more than quantity within the game unless you just cannot afford to get enough hulls into the water or unless we're talking about raiders.

With the USA specifically you can often afford both quantity and quality - as the USA on very large fleet size, if I end the game in 1950, I'll tend to have around 40 capital ships and at least as many cruisers despite having completely regenerated both forces at least twice and sometimes thrice - once to get rid of the pre/semi-dreadnoughts and protected cruisers, once to get rid of pre-1925ish ships, and maybe one more time towards the end of the game because what else am I going to do when I have the budget to build four or five - or occasionally even ten or eleven, if tensions are high across the board - 45000t capital ships in parallel in peacetime? The USA is probably the power which least needs the 'super-cruiser' within the constraints of the game, at least on large/very large fleet sizes. It's a bit more useful to other powers since they tend not to have anything like that much funding.

[generalvikus]

But, since you bring up the pocket - battleships, as I have said, I think that the design could be modified to perfectly round out the doctrine that I described above. 6 - 10 guns of 10 - 13 inches, relatively heavy armour (say, 6 - 8 inches on an AON belt) and a 30+ knot speed, weighing in (I imagine) at 15 - 20,000 tonnes would have the firepower and the armour to negate enemy heavy cruisers, effectively engage light cruisers, and outrun enemy battle cruisers (depending on the stage in the game, it might need to be pushed up to 33+ knots in order to do this, but this could probably be achieved with a refit to keep it relevant). I've never looked at the Alaska Class - always thought it was just another BC, but I always knew that it was officially a 'cruiser.' I'll take a look at it now - it might offer a good basis for the kind of ship I'm thinking of.

[generalvikus]

Another note on the pocket battleships and German surface fleet generally - what I said about them being 'unforgivable' is perhaps an unfair statement. They were quite useless against the Royal Navy - certainly not worth their weight in U-boats - but of course Hitler neither wanted or expected to fight the British, and there was undoubtedly something to be said for contesting naval domination in a war against France, and for instigating a partial blockade against the Soviet Union that could have interrupted any supplies going through the Baltic to Leningrad - or, for that matter, to Murmansk - if you remove the Royal Navy from the equation.

[rimbecano]

Sept 3, 2017 5:21:24 GMT -6 generalvikus said:

Sept 3, 2017 4:38:50 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

There were a few super-cruiser type ships in real life: the German Panzerschiffe, the Scharnhorst class, and the Alaskas. The latter two types have been called "Battlecruisers", and all three would be classified as BCs in RTW on account of gun size, but none of them had anything that qualified as capital ship armament for the WWII era (or even the 1920s, had the naval treaties not happened). The Panzerschiffe had just the problem you describe, by the time the war came along, there were just too many battleships (let alone BCs) that could keep pace with them or outrun them. I'm not quite sure why the Germans failed to foresee this.

My super-cruisers tend to be a few knots faster than my BCs, and armed with 10" guns if I have them in decent quality. They're often a response to a specific enemy class, and I don't build many.

The Panzerschliffes were intentionally designed to be weaker than the Allied battleships - not that the German Navy preferred it that way. They were simply an effort to build the best ship that could be built under the Versailles restrictions, not an effort to find a niche that they could fill better than anything else.

My point is that, not being able to outgun enemy battleships under the Versailles restrictions, the Germans should have made sure they could outrun them. 

[oldpop2000]

I want to point out that those ships had diesel engines installed. You would install diesels for reliability and range. This is why they were installed in submarines. They had a range of 10,000 miles at 20 knots. This is not possible with steam geared turbines for size of ship. The pocket battleships were equipped with an aircraft catapult and had two Heinkel He 60's. Later they were superseded by Arado Ar. 196.

If we examine the characteristics of one of the ships that chased Graf Spee, the Ajax had top speed was 32.5 knots however her cruising speed was only 13 knots for a range of 5730 miles. This means that if one of the spotting aircraft spotted her, the Graf Spee could run from her and maintain her speed which the Ajax could not do or ship would run out of fuel. Exeter had a range of 10000 miles at 14 knots. Same issues as the Ajax. Numbers were the only factor that could beat the Graf Spee and her sisters.

Now, should they have built them or built more submarines? Well 20-20 hindsight tells us the latter. However, at the time they were designed and built, 1931 the surface warship and the raider were still considered a potent weapon against Britain. In retrospect, they were waste of money, but at the time, Germany was still under the Versailles Treaty and this was all that was allowed and even these were a shade over the limits.

[akizuki]

Personally, I build supercruisers with a layout pretty much like the ones in the OP, then use the extra 10K tons to beef the armor and speed. It costs more upfront, but it pays off in the long run because they're damn near unkillable. I've attached an endgame version, but I actually roll these out really early, starting in 1902-ish when dock size hits 18K.

• V1 is ~19000 tons, 27 knots, 2x2 10" guns, and 9"/2" armor
  
• V2 is ~20000 tons, 29 knots, 4x2 10" guns with cross-deck fire, and 10"/2" armor
• V3 is ~21000 tons, 31+ knots, 3x3 8" guns, or 3x4 if I have improved quad turrets

The speed will outrun a battlecruiser of its era, and also can catch those annoying destroyer leader CLs the AI will make, with max speed for the time but only 3-4 guns. Having around 10" of armor is great in all eras. V1 can stand in the battle line in a pinch, which is nice since it costs as much as a pre-dread. In V2 it's enough to shrug off long-range BC fire if you draw a convoy attack or defense against them, or to go in for a deathmatch vs. the "true" BCs with 6" belts that the AI may put out early on. Endgame, you're running from all big ships, but 10" is conveniently enough to repel anything the AI supercruisers may put out - fight them long range, and your shots penetrate their 6" armor, while theirs bounce off your 10".

Attachments:

[garrisonchisholm]

Sept 3, 2017 11:18:16 GMT -6 akizuki said:

Personally, I build supercruisers with a layout pretty much like the ones in the OP, then use the extra 10K tons to beef the armor and speed. It costs more upfront, but it pays off in the long run because they're damn near unkillable. I've attached an endgame version, but I actually roll these out really early, starting in 1902-ish when dock size hits 18K.

• V1 is ~19000 tons, 27 knots, 2x2 10" guns, and 9"/2" armor
  
• V2 is ~20000 tons, 29 knots, 4x2 10" guns with cross-deck fire, and 10"/2" armor
• V3 is ~21000 tons, 31+ knots, 3x3 8" guns, or 3x4 if I have improved quad turrets

That is an ideal end-game ship, that would survive every scenario unless you un-luck into Night or Rain.  I don't use quad turrets though, jams are common enough that I can't abide more than 25% of my fire-power being tied up in one turret.

[babylon218]

I tend to focus my efforts on Battlecruisers rather than heavy cruisers, unless I have a specific need (colonial station ships, namely). However, in my recent USA game, I found myself having trouble stretching my budget to rebuild my battlefleet and enlarging my BC force (congress was getting uppity about my CA/BC tonnage), so I designed a light BC to replace my sole 1st-gen BC (everytime I tried to build a new generation of BCs, a treaty popped up and scrapped 'em) and provide a strong scouting and interception force. In terms of design, I based them on the British Renown-Class (high speed) and the US Alaska-Class (low-calibre and role).

Now, with regards to the Scharnhorst-Class: these ships were not designed as BCs, but as Battleships. German armaments were still gearing up to produce higher-calibre guns and this was still the early stage of German rearmament, so the Germans wanted to avoid panicking the RN - this is why they received 11" guns. However, it was intended to refit Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with 15" guns (similar to Bismarck) before war came. The outbreak of war with Britain and France forced this work to be postponed. Gneisenau began her rearming in 1942 after hitting a mine, but was sunk during an air raid on Kiel. Scharnhorst never recieved her refit, being sunk at the Battle of North Cape the next year.

Also, in the case of the Deutschland-Class at the outbreak of war the RN had only 3 big-gun ships which could catch them if they found them: Hood, Repulse and Renown. As the war continued this changed as the KGV-Class ships entered service. It's important to note that for 3 months the Graf Spee managed to run amok all over the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans until she encountered Commodore Harwood's South Atlantic Squadron waiting for him off the River Plate. The downfall of Graf Spee, of course, was that she was unable to withstand the damage she took and had to lay up in Montevideo, where she was scuttled a few days later.

[director]

oldpop2000 - good point. Britain relied on her vast network of refueling bases and so built ships that were very short-legged; the number of ships that had to withdraw from the hunt for the Bismark for lack of fuel was pretty much all of them. The diesels had a tactical liability in that they smoked heavily when ramping up speed; they also were heavier (ton-per-horsepower) than steam. Efforts to put them in bigger ships failed because big diesels have reliability issues - see US submarine engines - and even the Germans couldn't build workable diesels of battleship size.

babylon218 - The fate of Graf Spee points up what often happens in RtW - raider is damaged in a sea zone with no friendly port and has to scuttle or be interned. She probably could have taken all 3 cruisers had she gone in for all-or-nothing, but her captain - as a raider - wanted to discourage the enemy and slip away, not sink three cruisers and see his own ship shot to pieces. Interestingly, Harwood had a 'County' class heavy cruiser that was off refueling - see comment above. That would have tipped the scales against Graf Spee for sure.

As you probably know, S & G were originally laid down as additional pocket battleships and only later reworked into their final shape. Had they been refitted with 15" guns they would have been at least as capable as Renown and Repulse, but the start of the war effectively ended construction for the German surface navy.



For me, function is the key. I need super light cruisers to ensure tactical victory in all those scenarios that depend on light cruisers, so I build them very large, very fast and very heavily armed. My ideal light cruiser in the early game is a 7-7500 ton, 23-knot, 10-6" design; late game it is an 8000 ton, 28 knot, 12x6" ship.

Armored cruisers are useful early on and less so later because the game scenario generator won't call for them. If I have money I build some armored (or heavy) cruisers and mostly use them for colonial service. If I build 'supercruisers' in the late game it is because I don;t quite have enough cash for another capital ship, or to replace an aging ship on colonial service. Otherwise, light cruisers are my bread-and-butter solution (yes, I've sunk CAs with them, but more often damaged them and gotten them stranded).

Battlecruisers are generally more useful to me than armored cruisers are - makes sense because part of their reason-for-being was to destroy or replace the armored cruiser.

What I don;t hear is an account of how often these supercruisers actually get used, as opposed to building them for colonial service and/or prestige.

[archelaos]

Sept 3, 2017 11:02:39 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

I want to point out that those ships had diesel engines installed. You would install diesels for reliability and range. This is why they were installed in submarines. They had a range of 10,000 miles at 20 knots. This is not possible with steam geared turbines for size of ship. The pocket battleships were equipped with an aircraft catapult and had two Heinkel He 60's. Later they were superseded by Arado Ar. 196.

If we examine the characteristics of one of the ships that chased Graf Spee, the Ajax had top speed was 32.5 knots however her cruising speed was only 13 knots for a range of 5730 miles. This means that if one of the spotting aircraft spotted her, the Graf Spee could run from her and maintain her speed which the Ajax could not do or ship would run out of fuel. Exeter had a range of 10000 miles at 14 knots. Same issues as the Ajax. Numbers were the only factor that could beat the Graf Spee and her sisters.

Now, should they have built them or built more submarines? Well 20-20 hindsight tells us the latter. However, at the time they were designed and built, 1931 the surface warship and the raider were still considered a potent weapon against Britain. In retrospect, they were waste of money, but at the time, Germany was still under the Versailles Treaty and this was all that was allowed and even these were a shade over the limits.

Though it was diesel engine that doomed Graf Spee in the end After all, she won the battle and beaten UK cruisers, esp. Exter pretty badly, and took only superficial damage except single hit that destroyed oil purification plant, and made return voyage almost impossible.