Are early Light Cruisers a liability?

[stevethecat]

I have been mulling over this for a little while.. For a few years (game time obvs.) now I have been increasingly assigning my CLs to raider status in order to keep them out of the fleet battle mix. With no way of assigning divisions or task forces these escort ships are thrown into the front lines or worse, picked out of the hat to be the only active friendly ships where all they can do is run from the enemy CAs and BCs, or risk a semi-suicidal torpedo run.

Now in a perfect world where we had more choice over what the fleet composition heading towards battle was then I can absolutely see them being more useful, but as is I have found myself simply not building them in favour of CA's with 9 inch guns, and 5 inch secondaries for anti-DD duty., they tend to make it home in a much more 'I'm still floating' manner.

For future campaigns I think that I'm going to completely shelve all CL production and wait until the techs for a modern 1930-40's style CL are unlocked before spending any money on ships that I often spend more time arguing with then anything else.

Anyone having much joy with them in the early game?

[archelaos]

Unless you are playing with only flag division active (admiral mode) you can order your small CLs out of danger. IMHO admiral mode is too restrictive and I only play rear admiral or captain modes.
In Captain mode you can take over any division and control it manually, while in rear admiral mode you can command any division in visual contact with flag division.

Early, large 6-8k CLs could be very powerful, as early CLs do not have to be fast (22-23kts). In fact, they can be small yet quite strong.
In fact, I can't imagine playing without CLs as they are cheap enough to risk them, but still capable to take some punishment, unlike DDs.

[dorn]

Jun 7, 2019 0:03:00 GMT -6 stevethecat said:

I have been mulling over this for a little while.. For a few years (game time obvs.) now I have been increasingly assigning my CLs to raider status in order to keep them out of the fleet battle mix. With no way of assigning divisions or task forces these escort ships are thrown into the front lines or worse, picked out of the hat to be the only active friendly ships where all they can do is run from the enemy CAs and BCs, or risk a semi-suicidal torpedo run.

Now in a perfect world where we had more choice over what the fleet composition heading towards battle was then I can absolutely see them being more useful, but as is I have found myself simply not building them in favour of CA's with 9 inch guns, and 5 inch secondaries for anti-DD duty., they tend to make it home in a much more 'I'm still floating' manner.

For future campaigns I think that I'm going to completely shelve all CL production and wait until the techs for a modern 1930-40's style CL are unlocked before spending any money on ships that I often spend more time arguing with then anything else.

Anyone having much joy with them in the early game?

I found them excellent for foreign station duty. And there are even very good against heavy crusiers. Important is that they need to destroyers to accompany them. At night if they have torpedo tubes I found them almost equal to heavy cruisers. And they are much more expandable. In case they meet heavy cruisers during day their speed should help them evade battle.

It is no shame to evade fight with superior enemy without favourable conditions.

[fleet5]

Try to protect against 6' guns while yourself having many 6' guns, I wouldn't build many CAs since they are expensive and die quickly once BCs hit the seas.

[bidius]

I tend to design 3 different classes of CL per time period, one that can raid, one that can follow an expeditionary fleet and one that just stays in the home waters. CLs only become really useful when you get the Armor scheme and above water torpedo mounts, otherwise they're just cheap little boats that bring extra firepower to a battle. Certainly not a liability.

[fleet5]

The AI loves to use a lot of destroyers even early on so they are good for destroying those in fleet fights.

[generalvikus]

Jun 7, 2019 2:32:00 GMT -6 fleet5 said:

The AI loves to use a lot of destroyers even early on so they are good for destroying those in fleet fights.

True, but in those early fleet fights, would you suffer for the lack of them? In a typical early fleet engagement, the only threat posed by destroyers is against badly wounded ships. If you have a battleship that is so badly wounded that an early destroyer can kill it, then how often will it be possible to save that battleship, no matter what you do? If you slow your whole line then your whole line becomes vulnerable; if you leave cruisers behind to cover the damaged ship, then they can easily be shot to pieces by the enemy battleships. 

[fleet5]

Jun 7, 2019 2:37:38 GMT -6 generalvikus said:

Jun 7, 2019 2:32:00 GMT -6 fleet5 said:

The AI loves to use a lot of destroyers even early on so they are good for destroying those in fleet fights.

True, but in those early fleet fights, would you suffer for the lack of them? In a typical early fleet engagement, the only threat posed by destroyers is against badly wounded ships. If you have a battleship that is so badly wounded that an early destroyer can kill it, then how often will it be possible to save that battleship, no matter what you do? If you slow your whole line then your whole line becomes vulnerable; if you leave cruisers behind to cover the damaged ship, then they can easily be shot to pieces by the enemy battleships. 

The weird thing is that the Battleships screen the CLs which in turn deter enemy destroyers. The ranges are so short in the early fights that you can easily micro this stuff in rear-admiral. The night fights are also a problem, then the CLs screen the battleships.

[rimbecano]

I've found non-captial cruisers to have a poor price-to-usefulness ratio in the early game. They generally can't be built with more than a knot of speed advantage over my captial cruisers while carrying satisfactory armament and protection, so given the way that fleet speeds ramp up in the early game, I just can't justify them to myself.

[ramjb]

"In a typical early fleet engagement, the only threat posed by destroyers is against badly wounded ships"

humpf. Coming from someone who has played enough RTW1 and 2 to have had a good chunk of "early day" wars, I can say shenanigans. Any kind of low visibility situation is horribly dangerous when lots of DDs are involved. The weapons themselves are short range and slow. But when enough of them are in the water, things tend to end up getting messy. Sure, you won't hit 2s or 3s with a spread as will happen in lategame...

But they don't need to do that to be lethal. A single torpedo hit in the era of 0 torpedo protection and very few damage control techs researched can, and will in many cases, send a battleship to the bottom. No need to speak about what they'll do to an armored or light cruiser.


And not only in the receiving end and not only in low visibility situations: I've sent DD destroyers in death charges against a superior enemy in hot pursuit of my force enough times, and got enough critical torpedo hits out of them in the early game, to know those weapons aren't a joke. It's far from guaranteed, is far from a certain thing, but if you get a hit, you've got the battle sorted out for you because one torpedo is all it takes to sink an enemy big ship that will net you a tremendous ammount of points.

What what's me, I want something that is brisking with 6'' and 3'' guns to deal with them in those early days so any DD that comes within their range gets crippled ASAP. Other's opinions might vary, of course, but those ships have a role to play, and not having them might end up costing more than having built them in the first place.

[dorn]

I even sink early in game enemy battleship with 2 protected cruisers and 3 destroyers.

Protected cruisers can withstand some damage and with early difficulty to hit anything they are extremely dangerous. All was about to push them in such way they will turn into ideal position for torpedo attack from destroyers. It was not easy commanding only cruisers but achievable. And early pre-dreadnoughts has very bad possibility to fire aft, they aft arc firepower is quite limited.

[akosjaccik]

Other thing is that I personally feel like well-armed, decently armored early light cruisers can retain their usefulness fairly well into the game: as a supporting unit even if the speed is getting obsolete, it can still conduct scouting to a certain degree, it can still screen with 5-6 inch guns to bear on target, it still retains a worrysome presence even for later destroyers, it can help on the colonies or it can be used as an "Oh God!" TP-relief, or you can slap mines on it. ...and worst things comes, you lost a fairly small tonnage and VP. Compared to this, a pre-dread is much more like either "OK" or "not OK".
For this reason, while I generally am not going out of my way to retain an excellent cruiser force, I do value my legacy cruisers.

[generalvikus]

Jun 7, 2019 5:07:49 GMT -6 ramjb said:

"In a typical early fleet engagement, the only threat posed by destroyers is against badly wounded ships"

humpf. Coming from someone who has played enough RTW1 and 2 to have had a good chunk of "early day" wars, I can say shenanigans. Any kind of low visibility situation is horribly dangerous when lots of DDs are involved. The weapons themselves are short range and slow. But when enough of them are in the water, things tend to end up getting messy. Sure, you won't hit 2s or 3s with a spread as will happen in lategame...

But they don't need to do that to be lethal. A single torpedo hit in the era of 0 torpedo protection and very few damage control techs researched can, and will in many cases, send a battleship to the bottom. No need to speak about what they'll do to an armored or light cruiser.


And not only in the receiving end and not only in low visibility situations: I've sent DD destroyers in death charges against a superior enemy in hot pursuit of my force enough times, and got enough critical torpedo hits out of them in the early game, to know those weapons aren't a joke. It's far from guaranteed, is far from a certain thing, but if you get a hit, you've got the battle sorted out for you because one torpedo is all it takes to sink an enemy big ship that will net you a tremendous ammount of points.

What what's me, I want something that is brisking with 6'' and 3'' guns to deal with them in those early days so any DD that comes within their range gets crippled ASAP. Other's opinions might vary, of course, but those ships have a role to play, and not having them might end up costing more than having built them in the first place.

Far be it from me to deny that a skilled player such as yourself can get better use out of early game DDs than most, but I was speaking in the context of what the player needs to build. My question was, specifically, how often do you find the AI's destroyers making a serious contribution in the early game? How often has the AI sunk one of your non-crippled ships in an avoidable situation when you hadn't just decided '**** it, I'm out for blood, and losses be damned!' ?

[ramjb]

Lol it has nothing to do with skill, man. In fact if it has to do with anything, is with the opposite. Lack of skill. Because I've lost far too many ships in the very early stages of technology to torpedo to keep ignoring torpedoes (And their bearers) in the early game .


As for AI destroyers making a serious contribution in the early game...well, as you might have guessed by this stage, the bottom of the virtual world oceans have far enough wrecks of my ships for me to say that they're VERY dangerous if you let them close to your big ships .

My CLs are tailored for just that: giving a helping hand in keeping them far away from my big ships, and I just decline any kind of night fleet action whenever I know the enemy has strong numbers of DDs. If they happen to appear close to my Predreds I know what comes next... and I've had faaaaaaaaaaaar enough of that

[dorn]

Jun 7, 2019 7:23:17 GMT -6 ramjb said:

Lol it has nothing to do with skill, man. In fact if it has to do with anything, is with the opposite. Lack of skill. Because I've lost far too many ships in the very early stages of technology to torpedo to keep ignoring torpedoes (And their bearers) in the early game .


As for AI destroyers making a serious contribution in the early game...well, as you might have guessed by this stage, the bottom of the virtual world oceans have far enough wrecks of my ships for me to say that they're VERY dangerous if you let them close to your big ships .

My CLs are tailored for just that: giving a helping hand in keeping them far away from my big ships, and I just decline any kind of night fleet action whenever I know the enemy has strong numbers of DDs. If they happen to appear close to my Predreds I know what comes next... and I've had faaaaaaaaaaaar enough of that

What is quite nice and a reason a lot of people thought that AI cheats that as player is more and more agressive it gives AI more chances to have ideal torpedo solution.

Just look how AI use ships when player pursuit AI. Sometimes AI just change course and than turn back to original course if player is not just in line behind. As it give good torpedo solution with straigh course of ship in pursuit.
Sometimes fooled myself seeing ammo is going low I need to slow damned ship as soon as possible so going a little by side using full broadside seems solve. Yes, it solves it quite well getting torpedo hit. :-)