Anyone experiment with Ultra-Cheap ships?

[euchrejack]

I've been fiddling around with Ultra-cheap battleships.  Pre-dreadnoughts with 11 inch guns, balanced towards being as cheap as possible.  By pursuing this strategy, I have already won a war with France as Austria-Hungary with Small Fleet and Historical resources, and as you can see below, I am "Winning" the Battleships arms race versus Great Britain.

...Unless you factor in that their Armored Cruisers may or may not be comparable to my Pre-dreadnoughts.  But that is silly!  My Pre-dreadnoughts have 11 inch guns, and their Armored Cruisers probably don't*.  My ships are obviously superior!

*Actually, I looked at their Armored Cruisers, and they're armed with a ton of 6" guns, same as what the French were using.  Why build an Armored Cruiser if you're going to put 6" guns on it?!  Granted, they have more armor (4") that a Light Cruiser, but it seems such a waste of tonnage.  Even my Monarch-class ships could beat those things, if they don't have the good sense to run away!

I should point out that I "splurged" on upgrading the fire control on all the ships that I set as under construction when building the legacy fleet.  Sacrificing one months construction time for that fire control probably wasn't worth the delay.  While I set a large number to be under construction, I only have the resources to build one at a time and keep enough active ships to satisfy the Kaiser for most of my run.

[seawolf]

Quality over quantity always

[polygon]

It's a great idea until you actually have to fight the enemy. They can't run and they can't win, so what's the point?

[marcorossolini]

Aug 1, 2019 18:57:01 GMT -6 seawolf said:

Quality over quantity always

Ah ha!

But what if quantity has a quality all of its own?

In old RtW1 there were a number of people doing mini-ships. I never braved it myself, but the fact that they weren't fired immediately suggests it had some merit.

[noshurviverse]

While I didn't go through with them, I did make this build. If I increased the tonnage up to 18,000t or so I could get them up to something like 27kts or so.

[swang]

In RTW1 UK runs, I would have a class of 12 minimal pre-dreads as blockaders (short ranged, 15 knots) In my one and only RTW2 run, I finally scrapped the last of those around 1935

[JagdFlanker]

experimented with it in my early days of RtW1, but in the end like seawolf says Quality > Quantity

[DeMatt]

While I do like building 20kton/12" BCs in the mid-to-late game as cruiser-killers, I don't think I've thought of building "B"'s that are the size of light cruisers. I have to wonder how well they'd actually fare when a DD flotilla attack came in...

Aug 1, 2019 20:51:00 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

While I didn't go through with them, I did make this build. If I increased the tonnage up to 18,000t or so I could get them up to something like 27kts or so.

...that doesn't have enough armor to keep out DD AP, let alone anything bigger. It's just begging to flash fire if it ever gets shot at.

[mobeer]

Early game I have had success with small (9,000 tn) battleships with 11" guns, 17 knots and heavy armour, mixed with large CAs (11,000 tn) with 9" guns and 24 knots. This leads to two types of battle:
- indecisive fleet battles, where both sides damage the other but cannot penetrate armour so nothing is sunk
- decisive cruiser battles, where my cruisers chase down and sink weaker opponents

Later on as gun penetration and fire control accuracy improve I generally revert to larger battleships.

[griffin01]

9" armed B's are functionally worthless, they will be shot down by a properly built CA. If you want to keep your B's cheap and mass large-caliber firepower, then build them 9000 t with 2x2 11" guns, as much armour and possible and with a couple of small guns against destroyers. They will be only 50% more expensive, too, at around 30M for a ship as compared to 20M, and much, much more effective. I'm confident that 2 such ships would destroy 3 yours without any trouble.

That said, I always try to build the best ships I can. It's a bit of a roleplay on my part, but while I'm not unwilling to sacrifice my men, I will always try to ensure they have the best tools they can use to try and stay alive.

[cabalamat]

In one game I built a load of 2x3 6" gun light cruisers, which seemed to do OK.

[dorn]

Both ways work.
Quantity has lower risk as losses are not so painful and it is easier to blockade.
Quality has advantage in unfavourable battles.

[polygon]

Aug 2, 2019 5:34:12 GMT -6 griffin01 said:

9" armed B's are functionally worthless, they will be shot down by a properly built CA. If you want to keep your B's cheap and mass large-caliber firepower, then build them 9000 t with 2x2 11" guns, as much armour and possible and with a couple of small guns against destroyers. They will be only 50% more expensive, too, at around 30M for a ship as compared to 20M, and much, much more effective. I'm confident that 2 such ships would destroy 3 yours without any trouble.

That said, I always try to build the best ships I can. It's a bit of a roleplay on my part, but while I'm not unwilling to sacrifice my men, I will always try to ensure they have the best tools they can use to try and stay alive.

Although it's slightly later game tech, I think the most (literal) bang for your buck (firepower per displacement) would involve using quadruple AB turrets with all-forward main armament tech. That gives you a somewhat respectable 8 gun broadside of whatever caliber you choose, with the weight of only two turrets and a reduced armor weight. Of course, you can't fire to your rear, but that's the price of tiny dreadnoughts!

[Gerack]

I play in admiral or rear admiral mode, so I rather have a few good ships I can take direct command of than lot's of small ships that will commit sudoku on the enemy and get torn to pieces. Nothing beats the feeling of sinking three enemy 25~ tons BCs with a 55+ tons BB which is also faster than said BCs. Death stars are always fun (and viable!).

[rimbecano]

Aug 2, 2019 15:04:09 GMT -6 Gerack said:

I play in admiral or rear admiral mode, so I rather have a few good ships I can take direct command of than lot's of small ships that will commit sudoku on the enemy and get torn to pieces.

sudoku

seppuku

The difference is rather important. :-)

Also not to be confused with:

sudo
Kuh
sudo Kuh