8 inch vs 10 inch heavy cruisers.

[orkel]

Currently it seems heavy cruisers end up with 10 inch guns, including AI designs. The historical 8 inch heavy cruisers are, from what I can see, a much worse choice. The 10 inch monsters already start appearing in the mid 1920s - early 1930s.

I cannot be the only one that is not a fan of this in-game? It seems too easy too early to build 10-inch monster CAs that end up pooping on 8 inch CAs.

Should the design limit for a CA be lowered to 8 inch guns, or at the very least 9 inch, and anything above that stuffed into the BC category as the historical "large cruisers" or "supercruisers"? Like the ships that some nations like USA and Japan had plans for (Alaska class, B-65, etc).

Or perhaps 10 inch guns on a CA should have a RoF or accuracy penalty, before a certain year lategame (1945+ or 1950+)?

[rorie]

A big reason historically that heavy cruisers were armed with 8" guns is due to treaty limitations. Unless your in a treaty in game there is very little reason why not a naval power would arm CAs with 10".

[deeznuts]

8 inch guns don't have a much lower penetration than 10 inch guns, have a much faster RoF, are much lighter, and lategame get autoloaders.

8 inch CA's are not just viable but they will often easily defeat 10 inch CA's by having more barrels and better armour on a similar weight

[jma286]

Jul 22, 2019 13:26:37 GMT -6 deeznuts said:

8 inch guns don't have a much lower penetration than 10 inch guns, have a much faster RoF, are much lighter, and lategame get autoloaders.

8 inch CA's are not just viable but they will often easily defeat 10 inch CA's by having more barrels and better armour on a similar weight

Yup, and 10" CAs are almost never armored against 8" guns.

[dorn]

Jul 22, 2019 12:54:54 GMT -6 orkel said:

Currently it seems heavy cruisers end up with 10 inch guns, including AI designs. The historical 8 inch heavy cruisers are, from what I can see, a much worse choice. The 10 inch monsters already start appearing in the mid 1920s - early 1930s.

I cannot be the only one that is not a fan of this in-game? It seems too easy too early to build 10-inch monster CAs that end up pooping on 8 inch CAs.

Should the design limit for a CA be lowered to 8 inch guns, or at the very least 9 inch, and anything above that stuffed into the BC category as the historical "large cruisers" or "supercruisers"? Like the ships that some nations like USA and Japan had plans for (Alaska class, B-65, etc).

Or perhaps 10 inch guns on a CA should have a RoF or accuracy penalty, before a certain year lategame (1945+ or 1950+)?

There are always different way how to proceed.

The first question is against what threat ship is designed, in which situation is expected to fight.

Take early 40s. AI designs of CLs are usually 4x3x6" guns or 5x3x6" guns about 10000 tons or even more. You want cruiser which is cheap and have advantage over this type of cruiser? Design really small 8" cruiser which use advantage of range of 8" guns and you have cheap ship which can deal with them. Add torpedo tubes and you have ship which can be dangerous even at night or bad weather.

Relating 10" heavy cruisers. They are monsters but they costs about 60M, it is usually 1/3 of large battleship. You can build even heavy monster that will costs you a lot of funds, or you can have small light cruisers and enoguh destroyers that they will be match in battle. At day, your superior speed can help you to keep out of range and at night your force even cheaper will have advantage as this cruiser have not enough armour to protect them against even 4" shell from point blank. On top of that torpedoes are at night quite dangerous. I can see how AI regurarly aim torpedoes just using radar.

[desdinova]

What about 6" heavy cruisers? I haven't had much experience in the mid & late game in RTW2, but in 1 I generally found late-game that 15x6" cruisers were equal or superior to 9x8" cruisers due to their murderous rate of fire. Of course you'd need a lot of speed to close that range.

Also, in my Japan AAR,I found even in the armored cruiser era that 8" was superior to 9" and 10". My 8" cruisers were murdering larger Russian ships, mostly because 8" starts at qual 0, 9" at -1, and 10" had such a slow RoF.

[rodentnavy]

Having taken on and sunk a 10" gun cruiser with a 6" autoloaded gun cruiser I would not dismiss 8" or 9" gunned ships out of hand. The design process is one of trade offs and as others have noted the tendency by the AI is to trade cost and reduced protection for greater firepower. A balanced design will often overcome one which simply has bigger guns.

[mycophobia]

10" can give some thin BC a pause, but actually holds no decisive advantage over 8" cruisers since both are most likely able to penetrate each other, and the volume of fire can be very valuable indeed in that scenario. I prefer 10" if I happen to get them at Q0 or better early game, since early game 8in is easily defeated by a properly armored cruiser. Later on 8" is almost the go to since protection against 8" is much harder to achieve.

Bottom line is, 10" still gets eaten by BC for breakfast(although may get a few shot in against a thinly armored BC), their only niche role is arguably when fighting against other 8" cruisers, and as many have mentioned, 8" are not in a worse position most of the time.

I think the current CA classification is fine, BC spam being as quite prevalent already that more freedom in designing CA is a good thing imho.

Historical 8" treaty CA maybe worse than a 10in ones, especially if you try to keep them around 10000 ton, but one of comparative size that trade 10" for more 8" guns are quite evenly matched imho.

[rimbecano]

I tend to favor more heavily gunned cruisers, but I tend to play as the USA, where the foreign-service to budget ratio is fairly low. In a recent game I had converted all my BCs to CVs and had only fast BBs left in my capital fleet, so I actually started building 18000-ton 11" BCs for the heavy cruiser role (if you crush the German navy in the mid to late game, they also tend to develop a BC fleet that seems to originate in Deutschland-type CA designs that grow beyond the 12000 ton limit for 11" CAs).

[bouninng]

8in or 10in is by the other part.
I play USA in 1940's now, over half of other countly cruiser have around 5in belt and 9~10in＊9~12 gun.
It maybe me who start this trend, but when this happen handy 8in cruiser can't survive longer. You can penetrate and may win to him in night by 8in autoloader, but half of day isn't night.

And 8in autoloader is expensive than 10in. Weight is little light but cost is...

[dorn]

France 1946 - small CA

It has immunity zone against 10" Q1 guns:

Turrets: over 12500

Magazines: 13500-18800

31 knots, long range, 6 torpedo tubes for night figting

To have citadel immunity 13500-18800 yards, ship need to be 12300 tons and costs 55M instead of 47M.

For comparison with CL for 45.5M you can get this 9800 tons CL:

5x3x6", 8x2x4" DP guns, 4x3 torpedo tubes with reloads, 33 knots, long range, 3" inclined belt, 1.5" deck, 4" CT, 4" turret faces, 2" turret tops

[ulzgoroth]

I build my CAs to have substantial immunity against 10" guns, which makes me disinclined to arm them with smaller calibers.

...Though considering how often gun battles seem to happen at short to very short range I'm admittedly unsure whether I'm actually using that protection effectively.

[evil4zerggin]

8" guns seem to be especially favored in the penetration table, and 10" disfavored. It's as if 8" is performing like a 8.5", and the 10" like a 9.5". I wonder if the idea is that IRL 8" was an extremely common size, whereas 9" and 10" were quite rare, so the former might be better-developed.

[jishmael]

Jul 22, 2019 17:07:24 GMT -6 dorn said:

France 1946 - small CA

It has immunity zone against 10" Q1 guns:

Turrets: over 12500

Magazines: 13500-18800

31 knots, long range, 6 torpedo tubes for night figting

View Attachment

To have citadel immunity 13500-18800 yards, ship need to be 12300 tons and costs 55M instead of 47M.

For comparison with CL for 45.5M you can get this 9800 tons CL:

5x3x6", 8x2x4" DP guns, 4x3 torpedo tubes with reloads, 33 knots, long range, 3" inclined belt, 1.5" deck, 4" CT, 4" turret faces, 2" turret tops

Why the long range?

[dorn]

Jul 22, 2019 22:14:13 GMT -6 jishmael said:

Jul 22, 2019 17:07:24 GMT -6 dorn said:

France 1946 - small CA

It has immunity zone against 10" Q1 guns:

Turrets: over 12500

Magazines: 13500-18800

31 knots, long range, 6 torpedo tubes for night figting

To have citadel immunity 13500-18800 yards, ship need to be 12300 tons and costs 55M instead of 47M.

For comparison with CL for 45.5M you can get this 9800 tons CL:

5x3x6", 8x2x4" DP guns, 4x3 torpedo tubes with reloads, 33 knots, long range, 3" inclined belt, 1.5" deck, 4" CT, 4" turret faces, 2" turret tops

Why the long range?

In 1946 with diesel engines it costs about 20 tons.