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Post by thecarthaginian on Aug 27, 2015 1:43:00 GMT -6
Well, the autodesigner also does that for pre-Dreadnought Battleships, building a Dreadnought instead if you have the technology. Much like Bs and BBs, the BC basically replaced the CA, at least as far as history and the autodesigner are concerned. BC's didn't historically replace the armored cruiser - because (in a way) the armored cruiser theory* remained sound, indeed becoming the predominate ship type in every navy by WWII, while the battlecruiser was an evolutionary dead end in ship design... or at best subsumed back into its parent class with the advent of the 'fast battleship.' The modern CA, on the other hand, progressed independent of pre-dreadnought armored cruisers - through the Hawkins class of the British (an evolution of the 'lightly armored cruiser' with an armored belt and deck) through the Treaty Cruiser designs of the late 20's and early 30's and into the CA's and CL's of WWII... which were essentially the same type of ship, but armored and armed to different degrees for different uses. The painful truth of a battlecruiser is that any ship with capital ship guns will eventually end up pointing them at a capital ship... no matter what it is designed to do with them. When the number of armored cruisers shrank and the number of battlecruisers grew, the battlecruiser had only one use to justify its very expensive purpose - this involved inevitably facing other BC's, with guns its armor could not stop and which negated its speed advantage. * a ship designed to catch a lighter warship, but with guns too small to take a place in the battleline
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krawa
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by krawa on Aug 27, 2015 8:20:31 GMT -6
Sorry but I think you are mistaken on the role of the armoured cruiser. Armoured cruisers where at the time they were built considered capital ships as they were not much smaller than contemporary battleships, and in fact they were replaced by BC's in that role just like Dreadnoughts replaced earlier battleships.
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Post by namuras on Aug 27, 2015 10:10:54 GMT -6
If I remember correctly BC's where concieved because the French and Russians build larger and faster CA's instead of Bs and BBs. And at that point the british admirality needed ships to protect their traderoutes against those CA's. Also BC's where not initially called BC's, this term was officially introduced in 1911.
Also the difference between CL and CA is mainly in size and armorlayout. Their mission is ultimatly the same: commerce raiding /protection and scouting. In the timeframe of RtW a CL first becomes a "light Cruiser" once the belt and sloped deck armorlayout become available.
The whole classification between CL / CA and what came of them is a bit fuzzy. For example i think that the modern CL aka "light Cruiser" is a development from the CA "armored Cruiser" and that the CA aka "heavy Cruiser" as per the Treaty from 1922 is more of a development coming from modern CL.
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Post by cwemyss on Aug 27, 2015 10:55:09 GMT -6
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Post by namuras on Aug 27, 2015 10:59:11 GMT -6
That one is about how the game treats CA/BC and not what happened to them in RL... It is a good read and it actually inspired me to build 17k - 21k tns BC in my germany game.
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Post by thecarthaginian on Aug 27, 2015 16:21:44 GMT -6
Sorry but I think you are mistaken on the role of the armoured cruiser. Armoured cruisers where at the time they were built considered capital ships as they were not much smaller than contemporary battleships, and in fact they were replaced by BC's in that role just like Dreadnoughts replaced earlier battleships. No, they were not. In fact, the only times that I can find where armored cruisers faced battleships, they were massacred (Tsushima; Santiago de Cuba). No, the armored cruiser was originally came as a progression of the trade protection cruiser or raider - and occasionally made forays back into this purpose (notably HMS Monmouth). In Britain, the evolution of the pre-dreadnought armored cruiser is direct and traceable to the development of the Cressy-class from the Diadem-class. The 9.2" gun wasn't an anti-battleship caliber, but had long been used on British 'first class' protected cruisers for anti-ship work. Indeed, even the HMS Shannon and her developments - the Nelson-class and Imperiouse-class - were intended not to fight first-class ships of the line, but were rather "capable of competing with the second class Ironclads of foreign navies." Second-class means that they were not meant for the primary line of battle, but instead for low-intensity theaters like China where only lighter ships would be encountered.
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Post by spartan448 on Aug 27, 2015 17:07:47 GMT -6
Honestly the designer is kind of wonky with everything. Apparently as long as a ship makes more than 21 knots the game considers it a Battlecruiser. I mean, I built the 1939 refit of the Warspite in the designer - 24 knots, 8 15-inch guns in four double turrets, 8 6-inch guns in casemates, 8 4-inch guns in 4 double turrets, 14-inch belt, all that stuff - and it was calling it a Battlecruiser.
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Post by thecarthaginian on Aug 27, 2015 17:12:15 GMT -6
Honestly the designer is kind of wonky with everything. Apparently as long as a ship makes more than 21 knots the game considers it a Battlecruiser. I mean, I built the 1939 refit of the Warspite in the designer - 24 knots, 8 15-inch guns in four double turrets, 8 6-inch guns in casemates, 8 4-inch guns in 4 double turrets, 14-inch belt, all that stuff - and it was calling it a Battlecruiser. My last game it seemed like 24 knots was my cutoff... or maybe 23?
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Post by galagagalaxian on Aug 27, 2015 17:14:59 GMT -6
I believe the definitions change over time as technology advances.
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Post by alchenar on Aug 27, 2015 17:41:48 GMT -6
I believe the definitions change over time as technology advances. On point: a 1900 'Cruiser' is an evolution of the Napoleonic Frigate (which contemporarily would have been called a 'Cruiser' when not attached to a fleet) and existed to take over the same role: ie. to be a cheap fast ship that can act independently to run around doing literally everything a Navy needs ships to do that's not sailing in the line trading broadsides with the enemy line.
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Post by galagagalaxian on Aug 27, 2015 17:59:44 GMT -6
Actually, I meant the speed at which the game determines if a ship is a BC or BB, but yeah, that too.
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Post by williammiller on Aug 27, 2015 19:45:20 GMT -6
Honestly the designer is kind of wonky with everything. Apparently as long as a ship makes more than 21 knots the game considers it a Battlecruiser. I mean, I built the 1939 refit of the Warspite in the designer - 24 knots, 8 15-inch guns in four double turrets, 8 6-inch guns in casemates, 8 4-inch guns in 4 double turrets, 14-inch belt, all that stuff - and it was calling it a Battlecruiser. The ability to continue the game after 1925 was added due to player requests, and officially game play is not supported past 1925, so as the designer (Fredik) has stated you may and will see odd things happen after the 1925 cutoff.
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Post by tmp on Aug 27, 2015 22:21:58 GMT -6
I believe the definitions change over time as technology advances. I'd second this guess -- putting these numbers in the designer with the game in late 20's makes it accept the project as a perfectly valid battleship, not a BC. In fact after 1915 or so 26 knots won't cut it for a ship to be considered BC -- loading my older design this late and hitting "check" button results in having it re-classified as a BB. It needs at least 27 knots of desired speed for the game to still treat it as a BC.
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krawa
Junior Member
Posts: 96
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Post by krawa on Aug 28, 2015 5:26:44 GMT -6
Sorry but I think you are mistaken on the role of the armoured cruiser. Armoured cruisers where at the time they were built considered capital ships as they were not much smaller than contemporary battleships, and in fact they were replaced by BC's in that role just like Dreadnoughts replaced earlier battleships. No, they were not. In fact, the only times that I can find where armored cruisers faced battleships, they were massacred (Tsushima; Santiago de Cuba). No, the armored cruiser was originally came as a progression of the trade protection cruiser or raider - and occasionally made forays back into this purpose (notably HMS Monmouth). In Britain, the evolution of the pre-dreadnought armored cruiser is direct and traceable to the development of the Cressy-class from the Diadem-class. The 9.2" gun wasn't an anti-battleship caliber, but had long been used on British 'first class' protected cruisers for anti-ship work. Indeed, even the HMS Shannon and her developments - the Nelson-class and Imperiouse-class - were intended not to fight first-class ships of the line, but were rather "capable of competing with the second class Ironclads of foreign navies." Second-class means that they were not meant for the primary line of battle, but instead for low-intensity theaters like China where only lighter ships would be encountered.
By capital ships I only refered to the size of the CA's, not their role on the battlefield. You're right that (at least the British) CAs were never intended to fight in the battleline (although the Japanese CA did quite well at Tsushima). What I'm tyring to point out is that the destinction in concept between CA and BC you're making in your first post doesn't really exist. Both are build to fullfill the same roles (scouting for the battlefleet, trade protection and raiding, foreign Station flagship), both are built to almost the same size and cost of a contemporary battleship (e.g. Drake-class CA /Formidable-class B, Minotaur-class / Lord Nelson-class) and both trade firepower and protection for Speed and endurance. BC's put a bit more emphasis on firepower than CAs, but that's about all the difference in concept I can see. Bottomline is both are cruisers built to (nearly) the maximum possible size at their respective time.
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Post by dickturpin on Aug 28, 2015 6:11:47 GMT -6
I agree with krawa’s original post but I in fact believe that AC’s were intended to reinforce the battle line. I would provide a brief explanation which may be of interest for RtW designers.
The belted cruiser such as Cressy class and especially the Good Hope were significantly more expensive than the Protected Cruiser (that should essentially form the cruiser element of the legacy fleet in RtW). This was due to the requirement to operate with the battle fleet, both as scouts and to supplement the battleships.
These ships had amour thickness (6” KC belt) comparable to most battleships and extent of armour coverage was also higher than many battleships. Whilst the pair of 9” guns appear puny, heavy guns were ponderous and slow firing around the turn of the century. Also, fire control instrumentation and technique was non-existent for heavy guns. The medium quick fire 6” gun could be fired by continuous aim technique and could be fired at a much higher rate; this would be considered the primary arbiter of a gun battle as it could achieve a reasonable rate of hitting and could tear apart the extensive un-armoured areas of contemporary battleships and cruisers. The early belted cruisers had stronger 6” batteries than most battleships.
Advances in technique (salvo firing), instrumentation (rangefinders e.t.c) and rates of fire in the early years of the C20 resulted in the opportunity to exploit the superior ballistic properties of heavy guns at longer ranges. Thus the battleship re-asserted superiority over the belted cruiser as they became somewhat toothless.
Lighter and cheaper versions of the belted cruiser (county classes) were introduced for commerce protection.
Big gun armoured cruisers (Invincible Class/Indefatigable) subsequently re-classified as Battlecruisers outgunned contemporary battleships at long range (at which medium and intermediate calibre guns were ineffective and actually inhibited accurate shooting). Thin armour was less of an issue at long range as period AP shells did not have such effective penetrative properties and arguably HE or SAP was rather more useful. Such ships would not be so effective at short range against either battleships or conventional cruisers and thus needed to use their speed to avoid such an eventuality.
Heavy cruisers represented the upper limit (at least in theory) of the London Treaty. This had been determined by the existing Hawkins class of light cruiser. The Hawkins was a commerce protection light cruiser designed to counter other light cruisers. It was conceptually questionable as arguably a larger number of conventional light cruisers would undertake the role more effectively and the commerce raiding role was in any event being usurped by submarines. With lighter structure and engines (and a “flexible” interpretation of 10,000 tonnes) it was possible to build rather more potent versions of the Hawkins in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The precise role of such ships was not really established and such vessels would probably never have existed but for the treaties of the early 1920’s.
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