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Post by aeson on Jan 9, 2018 14:13:46 GMT -6
Just question. How good are the flotillas leaders in China AAR? I have never build them so early till double turrets on DD available. Can they partially replace small cruisers so early? I am just thinking enlarge them with long range and try to use them as riders. Hard for me to say. They were only in five engagements in the 1913-1918 Sino-Japanese War (all of which involved at least one of my capital ships, so what my DDs and DLs were doing was something of a secondary concern), and in two of those there wasn't really any action - in one, my notes say that the enemy force, a light cruiser and a destroyer, turned tail when it saw my force included three battleships, and in the other my notes say that the opposing forces never sighted one another. Of the other three engagements: - The first involved a Chinese force composed of a battlecruiser ( Kai Chi), a scout cruiser ( Chen Pien of the Yung Pao class), and three flotilla leaders ( Lei Li, Lei Chien, and Lei Hsun) beating the stuffing out of a Japanese light cruiser ( Tone of the eponymous class and four assorted destroyers; my notes say that Tone sustained 19 heavy and 20 medium hits, and the Japanese destroyers sustained 3 heavy, 22 medium, and 1 light hits spread out between the four of them, so the flotilla leaders may have been reasonably effective in that engagement - the three of them carried the majority of the medium guns in that engagement - but I don't have logs for the engagement so I can't say with any certainty that they did well. - The second was a coastal raid where the battlecruiser Kai Chi, the light cruiser Chien Sheng, the flotilla leader Lei Li, and the destroyer Kuang Ping sank two merchants and a minesweeper and damaged a destroyer, so I don't feel that there was enough opposition that this provides any useful information for evaluating the DLs' performance (assuming that anything other than Kai Chi did anything in the first place; my notes indicate the minesweeper took 7 heavy and 3 medium hits and sank while the Japanese destroyer took 1 heavy hit and ran off, and I didn't bother recording hit information on the merchants; Kai Chi was the only ship in my force with heavy guns). - The last of these three engagements was a coastal raid involving the battlecruiser Kai Chi and the flotilla leaders Lei Li and Lei Hsun. I do have logs for this one, and the logs indicate that the flotilla leaders' fire control left rather a lot to be desired - the two flotilla leaders in the engagement fired nearly 900 6" rounds between them and reported two hits each (only one of which seems to have been on a ship which wasn't already sinking, though they did manage to get a few near misses on live ships), while the battlecruiser Kai Chi essentially single-handedly sank the Japanese force. If I recall correctly, the flotilla leaders at least kept the Japanese destroyers busy while Kai Chi dealt with the Japanese battlecruiser Hiei and light cruiser Kasagi, but I wasn't particularly impressed by their performance in that engagement. Overall, I haven't been all that impressed with them, but they've also not really had much opportunity to show their quality. So? It's a 2100t CL, so it's only slightly less disposable than a destroyer, and it needs any advantage it can get if it's picked for a cruiser engagement against a ~4000t or heavier 6" cruiser rather than one of the ~3000t 4" jobs that the computer seems to like in the early game. 2x2x7" or 2x2x8" gives it about as heavy a broadside as any larger CL is likely to have until pretty late in the game while also giving it a range advantage over most of the CLs the computer will build. Also, you can improve the turret face to 3" and turret top to 2" on that particular design by knocking a knot off the design speed and reducing the main battery ammunition to 135 rounds/gun, if you're that concerned about flash fires on disposable ships. If you drop to short range in addition to reducing the design speed by a knot, you can leave the main battery ammunition alone and upgrade the secondary armament from 6x4" to 6x5".
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Post by dorn on Jan 9, 2018 15:41:52 GMT -6
Just question. How good are the flotillas leaders in China AAR? I have never build them so early till double turrets on DD available. Can they partially replace small cruisers so early? I am just thinking enlarge them with long range and try to use them as riders. Hard for me to say. They were only in five engagements in the 1913-1918 Sino-Japanese War (all of which involved at least one of my capital ships, so what my DDs and DLs were doing was something of a secondary concern), and in two of those there wasn't really any action - in one, my notes say that the enemy force, a light cruiser and a destroyer, turned tail when it saw my force included three battleships, and in the other my notes say that the opposing forces never sighted one another. Of the other three engagements: - The first involved a Chinese force composed of a battlecruiser ( Kai Chi), a scout cruiser ( Chen Pien of the Yung Pao class), and three flotilla leaders ( Lei Li, Lei Chien, and Lei Hsun) beating the stuffing out of a Japanese light cruiser ( Tone of the eponymous class and four assorted destroyers; my notes say that Tone sustained 19 heavy and 20 medium hits, and the Japanese destroyers sustained 3 heavy, 22 medium, and 1 light hits spread out between the four of them, so the flotilla leaders may have been reasonably effective in that engagement - the three of them carried the majority of the medium guns in that engagement - but I don't have logs for the engagement so I can't say with any certainty that they did well. - The second was a coastal raid where the battlecruiser Kai Chi, the light cruiser Chien Sheng, the flotilla leader Lei Li, and the destroyer Kuang Ping sank two merchants and a minesweeper and damaged a destroyer, so I don't feel that there was enough opposition that this provides any useful information for evaluating the DLs' performance (assuming that anything other than Kai Chi did anything in the first place; my notes indicate the minesweeper took 7 heavy and 3 medium hits and sank while the Japanese destroyer took 1 heavy hit and ran off, and I didn't bother recording hit information on the merchants; Kai Chi was the only ship in my force with heavy guns). - The last of these three engagements was a coastal raid involving the battlecruiser Kai Chi and the flotilla leaders Lei Li and Lei Hsun. I do have logs for this one, and the logs indicate that the flotilla leaders' fire control left rather a lot to be desired - the two flotilla leaders in the engagement fired nearly 900 6" rounds between them and reported two hits each (only one of which seems to have been on a ship which wasn't already sinking, though they did manage to get a few near misses on live ships), while the battlecruiser Kai Chi essentially single-handedly sank the Japanese force. If I recall correctly, the flotilla leaders at least kept the Japanese destroyers busy while Kai Chi dealt with the Japanese battlecruiser Hiei and light cruiser Kasagi, but I wasn't particularly impressed by their performance in that engagement. Overall, I haven't been all that impressed with them, but they've also not really had much opportunity to show their quality. Thanks for info. The lack of FC was my main concern of their usefulness. I think that this should change with director FC. However their usefulness before availability of director FC seems questionable for the smaller nations.
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Post by Airy W on Jan 9, 2018 19:53:49 GMT -6
So? It's a 2100t CL, so it's only slightly less disposable than a destroyer, and it needs any advantage it can get if it's picked for a cruiser engagement against a ~4000t or heavier 6" cruiser rather than one of the ~3000t 4" jobs that the computer seems to like in the early game. 2x2x7" or 2x2x8" gives it about as heavy a broadside as any larger CL is likely to have until pretty late in the game while also giving it a range advantage over most of the CLs the computer will build. Also, you can improve the turret face to 3" and turret top to 2" on that particular design by knocking a knot off the design speed and reducing the main battery ammunition to 135 rounds/gun, if you're that concerned about flash fires on disposable ships. If you drop to short range in addition to reducing the design speed by a knot, you can leave the main battery ammunition alone and upgrade the secondary armament from 6x4" to 6x5". They really aren't disposable, 8.175 million is enough to buy 3 or 4 destroyers in 1904. Regarding the guns, I'd rather have the 5 inchers. You already have substantial ROF penalties, on top of that your guns will be constantly jamming. You will not be getting sequential fire bonuses or giving under fire penalties as quickly. Plus 5 inch guns are only 40% as much weight and will hit destroyers more then your 3 inchers (because the secondary penalty and lack of fire control on secondaries more then cancels out the ROF difference). And a disabled turret, while not good on any ship, is going to be completely deadly on a ship with only 19 knots of speed. That's assuming it doesn't just blow up. Putting 5 inchers in secondary slots is okay but in secondary slots they wont have fire control and will have the secondary penalty to accuracy.
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Post by aeson on Jan 10, 2018 0:35:35 GMT -6
They really aren't disposable, 8.175 million is enough to buy 3 or 4 destroyers in 1904. ~8M is only about a third to a quarter the cost of the 5000-6000t 6" CLs that are the mainstay of my fleet cruiser forces for most of the game. 2100t CLs are fairly disposable. Also, 1904 DDs are almost, though not quite, worthless, at least on Admiral's and Rear Admiral's Mode. They rarely manage to torpedo anything that isn't already almost dead in the water, and between their light armament and lack of anything like decent fire control their ability to fight a gun battle even with contemporary destroyers is marginal. The cruiser you're proposing strikes me as an unsatisfactory compromise - 5" guns are more nearly anti-CL than anti-DD at the time the cruisers would be introduced, but just four of them on a cruiser that has size-related survivability issues that armor can't really fix, especially against midsize 6" cruisers that have more guns on the broadside, is kind of pointless, and against contemporary or even somewhat more modern DDs the cruisers would be better off with more lighter guns, more guns at the expense of armor, or both. Upgunning to 5" later in the ship's life also isn't going to be that expensive, if you decide that they need 5" guns for use against modern DDs and are worth keeping in service. Speed is far from essential on a colonial gunboat such as what dorn proposed. The computer thinks 4x8" (and even 2x8" or 2x7") is scary enough even on a midget cruiser that such ships can usually bully heavier, faster combatants. Also, the 1899/1900 version of what I proposed would be something more like one of these: Regardless, this diversion started with your comment about 'cheese' cruisers. A fast 2100t 6x5" CL with a four-gun broadside and two- or three-gun chase armament is not a 'cheese' cruiser, except maybe if you're building it as a blockade score exploit. It's a specialist cruiser which isn't quite sure whether it wants an anti-DD or an anti-CL armament and compromised on something which isn't all that good against either.
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cnw
New Member
Posts: 45
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Post by cnw on Jan 10, 2018 7:46:41 GMT -6
For me, the 2100t superlights are semi-disposable raiders and not much more, actual fleet duties are done by my 2nd class cruisers, which early on are usually 7-8000t protected CAs with uniform 7" and 4-5" secondary.
That said, the very first class of such ships tends to be less speed-oriented than the subsequent ones (usually 24kt speed and 4" main battery with 7-9 guns, decent armor in a protected cruiser arrangement) and are capable of fulfilling the task.
The later (1905 or so onwards) are pure raiding cheese - long range, reliability, notional armor (something like 1" narrow belt, nothing else), handful of 4" guns (like 4-6.. I'm not sure about the extent to which a ship's actual armament matters in the raiding duty), no fire control, maybe some 10-20t allowance for mines, and the rest goes to engines - you can get 29kt cruiser by 1904-5 that will stay relevant as surface raider until at least late teens, at the cost of being completely useless for anything else. But these ships are cheap and disposable, who cares.
Their era does come to an abrupt end by the time 1200+t DDs with 5" guns and directors start to appear, but by that time I generally replace them *and* the 2nd class protected CAs by actual light cruisers.
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Post by Airy W on Jan 10, 2018 14:36:47 GMT -6
Regardless, this diversion started with your comment about 'cheese' cruisers. A fast 2100t 6x5" CL with a four-gun broadside and two- or three-gun chase armament is not a 'cheese' cruiser, except maybe if you're building it as a blockade score exploit. It's a specialist cruiser which isn't quite sure whether it wants an anti-DD or an anti-CL armament and compromised on something which isn't all that good against either. It's good against cruisers because it's faster then them and fire two guns at them while chasing, giving a high chance to slow down the enemy so it can be swarmed. And against destroyers, 5 inch guns with central firing and without secondary penalties are devastating.
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Post by aeson on Jan 10, 2018 16:00:35 GMT -6
And against destroyers, 5 inch guns with central firing ... are devastating. If they can hit anything, sure. With central firing and only 2-4 guns capable of engaging, though, they're not going to reliably hit anything in a reasonable period of time, especially if you can be bothered to try to keep them outside of torpedo range. If you want to fight cruisers, 6" guns are flat-out better than 5" guns. They hit harder and the difference in rate of fire is marginal. 7" or 8" guns allow you to play the range game as long as the cruiser remains fast enough relative to its opponent to not be overtaken too rapidly, which gets around the survivability issues inherent to 2100t ships to some degree, and also let the ship punch well above its weight. If you want a 2100t CL to act as an anti-DD screen, you'd be better off with more guns or more lighter guns than with the armor you've put on them. If you want a 2100t CL to engage other CLs, you'll be better off with heavier guns or more 5" guns than with the armor you've given it, because anything much larger with 5" or 6" guns of its own, especially in any kind of decent number, isn't going to have any real trouble killing a 2100t 5" cruiser and probably isn't going to run from one or two, either.
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Post by brucesim2003 on Jan 11, 2018 6:57:26 GMT -6
Is it possible to have more than a 3" belt on a CL? Every time I try, it insists it is a CA. 3" on a Cl is fine; 3.5" (and no other changes whatsoever) moves it to a CA.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jan 11, 2018 7:50:12 GMT -6
Is it possible to have more than a 3" belt on a CL? Every time I try, it insists it is a CA. 3" on a Cl is fine; 3.5" (and no other changes whatsoever) moves it to a CA. Not that I'm aware of. It's not listed in the manual but seems to be a hard line between the class definitions. It's probably based on actual historical designs. I took a quick look through wikipedia and none of the last light cruiser classes ( Emerald, Königsberg, Omaha, Nagara, Duguay-Trouin and Admiral Nakhimov) built around the end of the game's original time frame of 1926 have more than 3 inches of belt armor. Even the Hawkins class which became the basis of the treaty heavy cruiser had 3 inches of belt armor. I realize it's problematic to use historical armor thicknesses for comparison in-game because of the way the armor tech progression works but if I had to put money down on why 3 inches of belt armor is a go/no go test for CL's to CA's I would bet that's what the developers were looking at.
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Post by Airy W on Jan 11, 2018 20:01:20 GMT -6
And against destroyers, 5 inch guns with central firing ... are devastating. If they can hit anything, sure. With central firing and only 2-4 guns capable of engaging, though, they're not going to reliably hit anything in a reasonable period of time, especially if you can be bothered to try to keep them outside of torpedo range. It's amusing that you are dissing what is actually a really, really good anti-destroyer armament when you just posted a design with 8x3inch secondaries on a 19 knot design. The 6x5 inch guns have a higher ROF, are more accurate and do more damage plus they shoot forward.
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Post by aeson on Jan 12, 2018 0:26:46 GMT -6
If they can hit anything, sure. With central firing and only 2-4 guns capable of engaging, though, they're not going to reliably hit anything in a reasonable period of time, especially if you can be bothered to try to keep them outside of torpedo range. It's amusing that you are dissing what is actually a really, really good anti-destroyer armament when you just posted a design with 8x3inch secondaries on a 19 knot design. The 6x5 inch guns have a higher ROF, are more accurate and do more damage plus they shoot forward. I haven't posted a 19kn design, nor have I posted a design with an 8x3" secondary battery. The two cruisers which have been posted that have either of those features were both posted by dorn, though neither cruiser has both of those features. Furthermore, none of the 7"-8" 2100t cruisers that I've posted are primarily meant for anti-DD work - they can be employed for such if necessary, but two are purpose-built low-cost raiders and the others are cheesy cruiser killers. Also, either you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes a "very good" anti-DD armament, or you're engaging in a lot of hyperbole. 6x1x5" in a 12QV34 is not a "very good" anti-DD armament at any stage of the game. It can't put any more than four guns on target at a time, which is no more than adequate, and until ~1000t DDs and torpedoes with maximum ranges of 8-9kyd start coming into the picture c.1910 4" guns are better for anti-DD work than 5" guns. Prior to then, 5" guns are what you compromise on when you want more anti-CL capability than you'd get from 4" guns and more anti-DD capability than you'd get from 6" guns in a single battery. A 2100t CL optimized for anti-DD work would look more like one of these while a 'cheese' 2100t CL would look more like one of the 4x8" CLs that dorn and I have posted previously than like the 6x5" CL you posted.
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Post by dorn on Jan 12, 2018 3:02:32 GMT -6
For cheese CL 2100 tons there is need of firepower, so ideally 2x2x8". Than there is 2 options: 1. armor 2. speed
Both have advantages and disadvantages.
1. armored gunboat (eg. 2x2x8" guns, heavily armored, slow) advantages: - cheaper to build (could be around 15 % than variant 2) and maintenance as armor is cheap, machinery is not - your armament and armor is usually superior what AI builds - long life - as armament and armor for CLs are not going better through the time, their firepower and protection is outclassed quite late (1920s)
disadvantages: - you cannot outrun anything, deploying them in areas with enemy CAs, BCs, BBs (not Bs) are risky. This is only disadvantage but is quite high but get a lot of advantages for that.
2. speedy raider (eg. 2x2x8" guns, minimal armor, max. speed) advantages: - speed - they can run from anything except DDs disadvantages: - a little more expensive than variant 1 - shorter life period as the most advance of cruiser design in first 2 decades is speed (I do not consider refit with target to increase speed as usually building new cruiser is more effective - either cost effective or quality effective)
Usefulness: 1. armor gunboat - colonial duties (including defence and raiders actions) - colonial nations, especially for France, UK - raider duties (in main areas) - risky but cheap - any nation with low budget 2. speedy rider - raiders duties anywhere - any nation - colonial duties with some limits (less battleworthy against larger CLs than variant 1) - colonial nations
Another questions and notes arising which I do not have answers yet:
1. DD as raiders especially after double turrets for DD? 2. AI nations builds could affect your strategy 3. with 8" guns refitting them with director FC would enhance them quite a lot
Did I forget something?
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Post by Airy W on Jan 12, 2018 6:35:04 GMT -6
So... 12VQ34 = not going to hit anything in a reasonable amount of time 48 RPM forward fire 76 RPM side fire 67 RPM rear fire 12CFGJKW34 = optimized anti-DD ship 48 RPM forward fire 119 RPM side fire 48 RPM rear fire
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Post by dorn on Jan 12, 2018 11:12:35 GMT -6
So... 12VQ34 = not going to hit anything in a reasonable amount of time 48 RPM forward fire 76 RPM side fire 67 RPM rear fire 12CFGJKW34 = optimized anti-DD ship 48 RPM forward fire 119 RPM side fire 48 RPM rear fire I do not consider rate of fire as important, especially for large distances. May be I am not right. Do you have some experience?
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Post by aeson on Jan 12, 2018 12:15:38 GMT -6
So... 12VQ34 = not going to hit anything in a reasonable amount of time 48 RPM forward fire 76 RPM side fire 67 RPM rear fire 12CFGJKW34 = optimized anti-DD ship 48 RPM forward fire 119 RPM side fire 48 RPM rear fire Disparage it all you want, but a 50-100% increase in broadside volume of fire is very significant, especially since you can usually make use of your broadside while screening big ships against destroyer attacks. Also, the main reason why I didn't use V turret on the examples I posted is that V turret wasn't available in the save I used to create them. There's also a secondary reason in that you can't use cross-deck fire with V turret, although as I didn't have cross deck fire in that save game I didn't design the cruisers to use it, and anyways the choice between V turret and cross-deck fire on is dependent upon whether you want to maximize rear-arc or broadside fire. While it's not particularly relevant, you have some math errors in your RPM figures - RPM for 2x1x5" should be 38 and RPM for 6x1x5" should be 114. For the sake of completion, the 5" 12CFGHIJKY with a twin Y turret offers 38/(117.8, 125.4, 129.2, 133)*/(22.8, 30.4, 34.2, 38)* RPM, the 5" ADEFGJKSTY with twin turrets in the A and Y positions offers (22.8, 30.4, 34.2, 38)*/(121.6, 136.8, 148.2, 152)*/(22.8, 30.4, 34.2, 38)* RPM, 4" 12FGHIJKW34 offers 40/120/40 RPM, the 4" 12DEFGJKSTY with a twin Y turret offers 40/(124, 132, 136, 140)*/(24, 32, 36, 40)* RPM, and the 4" ADEFGJKSTY with twin turrets in A and Y offers (24, 32, 36, 40)*/(128, 144, 156, 160)*/(24, 32, 36, 40)* RPM on the forward/broadside/rear arcs. *Tech dependent. Before developing medium wing turrets, light twin turrets suffer from a 40% rate of fire penalty, which is reduced to a 20% rate of fire penalty after the development of Medium Wing Turrets c.1901, further reduced to a 10% rate of fire penalty with the development of Reliable Power Training and Elevation Gear c.1914, and eliminated after the development of Improved Power Training and Elevation Gear c.1920.
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