Coastal Defense Ships - Allow building

[oldpop2000]

The coastal defense ship was popular until about the 1920's for nations who did not have the budget for a navy or did not have the need. Sweden comes to mind, but there are others. They were shallow draft ships, slower than regular battleships but armed and armored about the same. I have some examples for specifications. The HSwMS Sverige would be a good example.

I wonder if the team could add a specification for such a ship. The ships were able to sail into shallow fjords, bays and rivers where other ships could not and might be valuable as trade protection ships, in a cost per performance sense.

I know we can build these kinds of ships now, I believe, but I would like to see a design specification in the list of ship types, that would adjust the cost per ship. Post WW2 German documents show that the German's were planning to invade Sweden to get the iron ore but decided that the Swedish Navy, and its group of coastal defense ships were too tough in the region along the coast to tackle since logistics by sea was necessary to maintain the invasion force. I think this is good evidence for these ships. Just one of course. I think that Austria-Hungary could use these kinds of ships also. There may be others including CSA. Cost, if I interpret the data ok, is 36,000,000 approximately. I don't know if we could save more money or even if this ship is a cost savings.

[wlbjork]

Perhaps it could be set that the specific combination of Short Range, Low Freeboard and Cramped Accommodation results in the ship being classified as a Coastal Defence type?

(I appreciate that this combination might not be accurate, but trying to keep it as simple as possible).

[oldpop2000]

Jan 24, 2020 11:44:14 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Perhaps it could be set that the specific combination of Short Range, Low Freeboard and Cramped Accommodation results in the ship being classified as a Coastal Defence type?

(I appreciate that this combination might not be accurate, but trying to keep it as simple as possible).

Yes, that would be the idea. A set of specification as you have indicated. Then classify it as a Coastal Defense battleship with a lower cost. In actuality, it should be lower draft, not necessarily low freeboard but that is what we have to work with. 

[dorn]

Jan 24, 2020 11:56:40 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

Jan 24, 2020 11:44:14 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Perhaps it could be set that the specific combination of Short Range, Low Freeboard and Cramped Accommodation results in the ship being classified as a Coastal Defence type?

(I appreciate that this combination might not be accurate, but trying to keep it as simple as possible).

Yes, that would be the idea. A set of specification as you have indicated. Then classify it as a Coastal Defense battleship with a lower cost. In actuality, it should be lower draft, not necessarily low freeboard but that is what we have to work with. 

You can build such ships however game does not recognize the difference of such ship and coastal battleship which means that both type of ships can appear in all scenarious with battleships at that area no matter how far from coast scenario is.

[stevethecat]

The game is missing a few 'roles' for ships, even if you can build ships with very close stats. Coastal defence ships, monitors, CVE's, Flotilla leaders etc.


Someone will often pop along to these threads and post a screen cap with a 'you can already do this' comment but not being able to limit the specialised classes to the role that they were designed for essentially renders them a liability and therefore unviable.

[aeson]

What do you want to get from the addition of an explicit "Coastal Defense (Battle)Ship" type that you cannot get under the current system? If all you want is a cheap battleship-type vessel, you can already get that:

All of those are legal "battleship" designs for the legacy fleet in RTW2 v1.15; all of them are roughly comparable in cost to a typical mid-range to high-end CL and pretty much all of them are below your estimated price point. Different balances of capability and cost or speed vs protection vs firepower are of course possible, and better designs become feasible later in the game.

Someone will often pop along to these threads and post a screen cap with a 'you can already do this' comment but not being able to limit the specialised classes to the role that they were designed for essentially renders them a liability and therefore unviable.

An explicit Coastal Battleship or similar classification that prevents the ship from showing up to certain types of battles would itself be a liability - what, you think that having half your battle line composed of ships that have a high chance of not showing up to an engagement is a good thing?

[oldpop2000]

Jan 24, 2020 14:04:47 GMT -6 aeson said:

What do you want to get from the addition of an explicit "Coastal Defense (Battle)Ship" type that you cannot get under the current system? If all you want is a cheap battleship-type vessel, you can already get that:

All of those are legal "battleship" designs for the legacy fleet in RTW2 v1.15; all of them are roughly comparable in cost to a typical mid-range to high-end CL and pretty much all of them are below your estimated price point. Different balances of capability and cost or speed vs protection vs firepower are of course possible, and better designs become feasible later in the game.

Someone will often pop along to these threads and post a screen cap with a 'you can already do this' comment but not being able to limit the specialised classes to the role that they were designed for essentially renders them a liability and therefore unviable.

An explicit Coastal Battleship or similar classification that prevents the ship from showing up to certain types of battles would itself be a liability - what, you think that having half your battle line composed of ships that have a high chance of not showing up to an engagement is a good thing?

Well, if this is the decision by the team then that is fine. Just an idea.

[aeson]

Jan 24, 2020 14:35:34 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

Well, if this is the decision by the team then that is fine. Just an idea.

I'm asking what you want from the category because I don't see what advantage there is to having an explicit "coastal defense ship" classification. Cheap battleships are already an option, and it doesn't seem to me that there's any real advantage to having them explicitly classed as "Coastal Defense Ships."

[stevethecat]

Jan 24, 2020 14:04:47 GMT -6 aeson said:

what, you think that having half your battle line composed of ships that have a high chance of not showing up to an engagement is a good thing?

And that right there is the point of limited roles. There would be NO chance of them showing up in battle lines. The nations that built these ships seperated the roles, they were simply not part of those fleets, not included in those considerations. Don't ask me why I think they should be a seperate role ask those who set the doctrine for the actual navies that built and used these ships for the role that they were intended for.

And as for making up half the fleet? No.

[aeson]

Jan 24, 2020 15:49:45 GMT -6 stevethecat said:

And that right there is the point of limited roles. There would be NO chance of them showing up in battle lines. The nations that built these ships seperated the roles, they were simply not part of those fleets, not included in those considerations. Don't ask me why I think they should be a seperate role ask those who set the doctrine for the actual navies that built and used these ships for the role that they were intended for.

And as for making up half the fleet? No.

The states that built coastal defense ships or coastal battleships by and large built them instead of - not in addition to - ocean-going battleships, and the more capable examples of such ships were very much meant to be capable of standing up to foreign ocean-going battleships in an engagement between battle lines, at least in the restricted waters off the homeland's coast.

[oldpop2000]

The specifications for such ships would be the following:

Full load displacement of 12000 tons or less

Less than 400 feet long

60-70 feet beam.

Draught about 20-25 feet

Freeboard about 23-25 feet

Dual shafts, 20-25 knots with a range of 3000-4000 miles at 1--15 knots

Armor could be standard for the period

Armament would be limited to four to six 11 or 12 inch guns. Secondary and tertiary could be 6 inch guns and 20-40 mm. dual purpose mounts

The cost would be about 4-6 million dollars apiece. A country could build a smaller coastal defense battle group to protect the trade and coast, with a smaller blue water force for heading out into the oceans to protect her trade. 

[colprice]

We do have submarines with "coastal" restrictions...

Presumably, if a battleship is given a short range, it won't appear away in a battleline away from its home port?

[noshurviverse]

When I did a Japanese campaign a bit ago, I created two types of legacy battleships; a heavily armed and armored one with short range and a variant with a lighter armament but with medium range. I found that in battles, I would almost always get the medium range ships but not the short range ones. That makes me suspect that short range ships have a maulus in being selected for battles. In any case, if I built a "coastal defence battleship" and assigned it to TP, would it not likely show up escorting convoys and defending the coastline?

[oldpop2000]

Jan 25, 2020 19:26:54 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

When I did a Japanese campaign a bit ago, I created two types of legacy battleships; a heavily armed and armored one with short range and a variant with a lighter armament but with medium range. I found that in battles, I would almost always get the medium range ships but not the short range ones. That makes me suspect that short range ships have a maulus in being selected for battles. In any case, if I built a "coastal defence battleship" and assigned it to TP, would it not likely show up escorting convoys and defending the coastline?

A coastal defense battleship's primary mission is to protect the coast against invasion, ports  and coastal littoral zones. So it could show up escorting coastal convoys.

[kriegsmeister]

I think we all here are a bit off on what the actual specifications and roles of Coast Defence Ships (as well as turn of the century Monitor's). They are much more similar in design as short ranged and slow Armored Cruisers rather than pre-dreadnought battleships. Ranging in typical size of 3-5k tons with, a main armament of 2-4x 9-10in guns, a speed of 14-16kn, and belt armor around 4-8in. The Sverige-class are far and beyond the largest, heaviest armed, and fastest of the type at ~7000T, 4x11in, and 23 knots. Much more in line with a full fledged AC or second rate Fast Battleship, however they are definitely the exception and not the norm. You then have the US and UK Monitors which where of very similar size and design but tended to have heavier guns of 12in or greater for quite a loss of speed at around 12k or less.

These ships for the most part were intended to work in conjuction with other coastal vessels and torpedo boats to defend said coasts from attack, primarily by utilizing better positioning in shallow waters. However, this strategy was just more of a deterrent and any actual conflict with a force of a full fledged battleship or 2 with escorting cruisers and destroyers would blast them to bits with near impunity. The only reason the Sverige-class were able to deter German invasion was more to do with the British navy needing absolutely full attention by the Kriegsmarine's miniscule size. If they did invade they would only be able to spare a handful of cruisers and destroyers of which the Sveriges could definitely hold their own against.

The British also used their Monitors in the shore bombardment role to great effect as they could sail much closer to the coasts with their shallower drafts and hit targets with deeper inland.

So all that being said I definitely see a place for CDS/M in rule the waves as a sort of big brother to Corvettes in which they spawn in as AI controlled units during coastal raids and maybe even as the aggressor in bombardment missions. As for design limits, I would say max of: 8000Ton Displacement, 18kn speed, 4x Medium Guns or 2x Heavy Guns, 3-8in of armor. Additionally some other limits such as Short Range and low freeboard might be imposed but since such limitation are not put on any other class this could probably be overlooked.