|
|
Post by ccip on Sept 19, 2015 0:38:27 GMT -6
Wow, that is indeed an impressive little ship! Did not think you could fit that many 15in guns on a ship that small.
|
|
|
|
Post by tmp on Sept 19, 2015 10:26:02 GMT -6
Here is my pocket battleship. Its 1919 and while I am not the only one with 15 inch guns the other countries only carry 10 of them on much bigger and more expensive ships (around 32,000 tons). I managed to fit 8 into this little sucker. I was considering 2x4 layout for my medium size Italian battle-cruisers, but ultimately decided against it -- the number of turrets is a weak point, as it means having just one jammed or destroyed cuts your firepower in half. Lose two, and you are a sitting duck. And with only 10" turret armour these things will get knocked out by anything bigger than armoured cruiser, or in some cases even by a larger armoured cruiser. (iirc it's the very reason the French made their quadruple turrets effectively as two double turrets in single housing, with additional wall separating them and all) Then you add to it the fact quadruple turrets are penalized until you acquire some very late techs, and the benefit of having 1-2 more guns there start looking even more dubious. |
|
|
|
Post by genjeft on Sept 19, 2015 13:58:13 GMT -6
Here is my pocket battleship. Its 1919 and while I am not the only one with 15 inch guns the other countries only carry 10 of them on much bigger and more expensive ships (around 32,000 tons). I managed to fit 8 into this little sucker. I was considering 2x4 layout for my medium size Italian battle-cruisers, but ultimately decided against it -- the number of turrets is a weak point, as it means having just one jammed or destroyed cuts your firepower in half. Lose two, and you are a sitting duck. And with only 10" turret armour these things will get knocked out by anything bigger than armoured cruiser, or in some cases even by a larger armoured cruiser. (iirc it's the very reason the French made their quadruple turrets effectively as two double turrets in single housing, with additional wall separating them and all) Then you add to it the fact quadruple turrets are penalized until you acquire some very late techs, and the benefit of having 1-2 more guns there start looking even more dubious. Considering that almost all the stuff on this thread that other people posted as "Pocket Battleships" really are just heavy cruisers with 10 inch guns or less which my ships armor can take hits from. They would have to close within 8,000 yards to reliably pen the armor and to really do it they have to get closer then that. In the mean time the other pocket battle ships armor is so thin that even my secondaries have a chance of doing damage at those close ranges. The only real option these other pocket battleships have is to use their speed to run away or hope to quickly close in to less then 8,000 yards under a hail of 15 inch cannon fire while hoping that one of the quad turrets jam. I have an 11 inch belt and 10 inch turrets, the 10 inch guns dont pen 10 inches until about 8,250 yards. They wont pen the 11 inch belt till around 7,500 yards. Meanwhile my guns turn those ships to swiss cheese out to max range of 27,280 yards. Yea they got the speed to close, but that is still a LONG way to travel while under fire knowing that any hit will cause a lot of damage. I dont like their odds. The only person to really post something close to a true pocket battleship is ccip with his IKI class dreadnought. That thing has 12 inch guns that can pen my 10 to 11 inch armor at a reasonable range (12,500 yards or so). The rest are just heavy cruisers. |
|
|
|
Post by ccip on Sept 19, 2015 15:44:48 GMT -6
Well, for the most part, if the "pocket battleship" is something that's built because the builder can't afford a battle squadron that will be able to stand its ground against an enemy fleet, it's already sort of a cruiser by definition anyway. In that case it has to make cruiser-like compromises to be useful.
I actually find 2x4 turret layouts really useful, but more so on battlecruisers - they're more of a liability on ships meant to stand and fight, but on ships that can dodge out if one of the turrets fails it's not so much of a problem.
|
|
|
|
Post by hschuster44 on Sept 19, 2015 15:57:16 GMT -6
... And as far as I know even the original pocket battleships (Lützow, Ex-Deutschland and Admiral Scheer) were classified as CAs in the early fourties.
|
|
|
|
Post by tmp on Sept 19, 2015 16:22:50 GMT -6
Considering that almost all the stuff on this thread that other people posted as "Pocket Battleships" really are just heavy cruisers with 10 inch guns or less which my ships armor can take hits from. From what I get from the OP, these designs focus on the "run from bigger, kill the weaker" approach, so they trade armour and armament for speed, equipping guns just large enough to allow them reliably kill light and armoured cruisers, and enough protection to take hits from these intended targets. If they encountered your ship they'd simply run away from it. At the same time it can't be quite said about this design -- its lack of speed means she will neither catch the smaller ships, nor will be able to run from the bigger ones herself, and it's these bigger ships that she won't be able to stand up to. Deutschland class cruisers, i.e. what people tend to mean when they talk about "pocket battleships" we along these lines, too -- while they had quite strong guns, they had very little armour, sacrificing it for speed. |
|
|
|
Post by ccip on Sept 19, 2015 16:29:55 GMT -6
To be fair, the designation of the actual German "pocket battleships" was more a matter of politics than function - for treaty purposes, they were regarded as CAs, for domestic propaganda purposes as "battleships" of sorts. I guess in actuality they were something of their own after all.
But I have to say, I'm a big fan of the game's treaty feature - there are some weird and wonderful designs that come out of treaty periods. I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to build "pocket" ships without treaties, unless you're very poor, but treaties give you an opportunity to experiment without too much risk (because all the other powers won't outbuild you in the meantime).
|
|
|
|
Post by hschuster44 on Sept 19, 2015 16:49:40 GMT -6
To be fair, the designation of the actual German "pocket battleships" was more a matter of politics than function - for treaty purposes, they were regarded as CAs, for domestic propaganda purposes as "battleships" of sorts. I guess in actuality they were something of their own after all. But I have to say, I'm a big fan of the game's treaty feature - there are some weird and wonderful designs that come out of treaty periods. I don't think it makes a whole lot of sense to build "pocket" ships without treaties, unless you're very poor, but treaties give you an opportunity to experiment without too much risk (because all the other powers won't outbuild you in the meantime). Necessity is the mother of Invention = Not macht erfinderisch  |
|
|
|
Post by genjeft on Sept 19, 2015 21:31:13 GMT -6
Considering that almost all the stuff on this thread that other people posted as "Pocket Battleships" really are just heavy cruisers with 10 inch guns or less which my ships armor can take hits from. From what I get from the OP, these designs focus on the "run from bigger, kill the weaker" approach, so they trade armour and armament for speed, equipping guns just large enough to allow them reliably kill light and armoured cruisers, and enough protection to take hits from these intended targets. If they encountered your ship they'd simply run away from it. At the same time it can't be quite said about this design -- its lack of speed means she will neither catch the smaller ships, nor will be able to run from the bigger ones herself, and it's these bigger ships that she won't be able to stand up to. Deutschland class cruisers, i.e. what people tend to mean when they talk about "pocket battleships" we along these lines, too -- while they had quite strong guns, they had very little armour, sacrificing it for speed. I built 3 of them for a specific purpose. To fight the Russians. They had the speed to keep up with the Russian battleships and the armor to take the hits from them (the Russian fleet in my game has never proven to be good). Speed was not a concern since they had the armor and firepower to stand up to ships bigger then them. They were also never meant to chase down CAs or lighter (granted a few long range blasts sent a few CLs to Davy Jones). The problem I had was that the Russian fleet outnumbered me (10 battleships to 4 and 18 BCs to 6). I needed a ship that could reasonably stand in a battle line against the Russian battle-fleet and had the firepower to break their ships all while not being overly expensive. (I can build 3 of these pocket ships for every single fullsized battleship). 22 knots happens to be my standard speed for battleships (I could have done 24 by sacrificing some ammo and secondary turrets). The ultimate question is did they serve their purpose, and the result was a resounding success. These 3 Yashima class ships and a 3 really old pre-dreadnaughts that have been around since before 1904 were caught at point blank range in a rain squall by 5 Russian BCs (sighting distance was less then 5,000 yards). One old B was devastated by the initial attacking taking a huge number of 14 inch gun hits that blasted it away, the other two managed to cause some damage with the 10 inch guns they had as they ran away, oddly one old B broke off and ran into the middle of the enemy fleet and survived with minimal damage. The Russian BCs decided to continue their course chasing after the old Iwami class B that was running away towards the rest of the fleet. As they came into sight of the pocket they got hammered by the 15 inch guns. At that range the Russian ships were just paper under the 15 inch barrage. Turrets blasted away, engines knocked out and ships dead in the water. In under 10 minutes 3 Russian BCs were sinking, one only had a single turret left functioning while only making 10 knots and one was undamaged due to its fortune of never getting within 5,000 yards to be spotted. By the time my Fuso class battleships showed up around 15 minutes after the first engagement they only had that one undamaged ship to take care of. Which went real quick at that range, my Fuso class BBs carry 18 14 inch guns. Take a guess at how many hit at point blank ranges. The damage report from the pocket battleships was 1 turret jammed (not from enemy fire) and between them all about 25 heavy hits and 30 medium hits for no serious damage, damage was so quick to repair they were available right away. All ships were able to steam at full speed and were combat effective. Granted that only remained that way until they tried shooting at destroyers with those turrets. Side note, those turrets are not meant to be aimed at destroyers. After the engagement with the enemy destroyers they had 1 functioning turret between the 3 of them, nearly every single turret jammed from the rough handling, but battle was over by then so it did not matter. They did perform quite well in the later short battle between my battleship line and the Russian battleship line when those caught up with me. The Russian line withered under the fire of 24 15 inch guns and 54 14 inch guns. Nothing of them from the waterline up remained at the end and my destroyers finished them off with torpedoes. I think I will build a 16 inch version of these things. After that one engagement the Russian fleet consists of only 2 BCs, 19 CLs, and 12 DDs. (Huge fleet sizes) |
|
|
|
Post by ramjb on Sept 20, 2015 2:06:12 GMT -6
Considering that almost all the stuff on this thread that other people posted as "Pocket Battleships" really are just heavy cruisers with 10 inch guns or less which my ships armor can take hits from. Well that's what the real "pocket battleships" were, after all, heavy cruisers with oversized weapons given to it because of political reasons. And the own "pocket battleship" name came from a foreign power's press, the germans never called those ships anything like that because they were pretty straighforward about what they actually were, so first they called them "Armored ships" and then they called them "heavy cruisers". The only ones pretending those things were battleships were the british, who seem to have had a knack of doing their own interpretation of what foreign stuff was (like calling the Scharnhorsts "Battlecruisers" XD) |
|
zoomar
Junior Member
Posts: 60 
|
Post by zoomar on Sept 22, 2015 15:32:16 GMT -6
As the US in my last game we lost a war with Britain in 1918-19 and got stuck with a 10,000 ton limit on ship construction as part of the treaty. This really sucked because I was basically forced into a "battleship holiday" just as all the other powers were beginning to get in stride with super dreadnought BBs and BCs in the 40,000 to 45,000 range, while I had to scrap mine that were under construction. In a panic, I decided I'd try the pocket battleship concept and came up with a 10,000 ton 28 kt CA with CA-quality armor, 2x12 inch guns (single turrets fore and aft), 12x8 inch guns in twin secondary turrets, and 5 inch tertiaries. I built 10 of them to serve as raiders and to replace some old CAs and CLs. Unfortunately, in 1924 my stupid President offended France and to maintain my already marginal prestige I had to support him and they declared war on us. France, it turned out, had completed better and faster battle cruisers than the Almanac showed. In my first engagement featuring these CA's a French battle cruiser intercepted one off Britain. Oops, the French ship was capable of 30 knots and armed with 8x15 inch guns. BlubBlub went my CA in short order. We actually won the war thanks to some very stupid French AI off Puerto Rico, but it was too late for me. The press and politicians were pissed we had so few battleships ("not my fault" I kept saying to no avail) and I was fired.
I love this game!
|
|
|
|
Post by brucesim2003 on Sept 22, 2015 18:40:47 GMT -6
As the US in my last game we lost a war with Britain in 1918-19 and got stuck with a 10,000 ton limit on ship construction as part of the treaty. This really sucked because I was basically forced into a "battleship holiday" just as all the other powers were beginning to get in stride with super dreadnought BBs and BCs in the 40,000 to 45,000 range, while I had to scrap mine that were under construction. In a panic, I decided I'd try the pocket battleship concept and came up with a 10,000 ton 28 kt CA with CA-quality armor, 2x12 inch guns (single turrets fore and aft), 12x8 inch guns in twin secondary turrets, and 5 inch tertiaries. I built 10 of them to serve as raiders and to replace some old CAs and CLs. Unfortunately, in 1924 my stupid President offended France and to maintain my already marginal prestige I had to support him and they declared war on us. France, it turned out, had completed better and faster battle cruisers than the Almanac showed. In my first engagement featuring these CA's a French battle cruiser intercepted one off Britain. Oops, the French ship was capable of 30 knots and armed with 8x15 inch guns. BlubBlub went my CA in short order. We actually won the war thanks to some very stupid French AI off Puerto Rico, but it was too late for me. The press and politicians were pissed we had so few battleships ("not my fault" I kept saying to no avail) and I was fired. I love this game! That is the time to build light battlecruisers rather than battleships. When the treaty expires, they are still useful for catching raiders. Build 'em with twin 11" (to get the BC designation), and make 'em fast. B/c they are only 10k tons you you would be able to serial produce them. And b/c they are battlecruisers the public will stop bitchin' about "not enough ships". Cheers Bruce |
|
|
|
Post by ramjb on Sept 23, 2015 0:56:57 GMT -6
I think the cutoff of 11 inch guns for the BC class is a tad too restricting. After all you can build 9 inch gun predreadnoughts without a problem and those will count as capital ships. I don't see why a ship fast enough with 9 inch weaponry can't be called a battlecruiser. Would probably be a major case of playing the "denominations game", but if the japanese could call an 8 inch belt battlecruiser a "fast battleship" during WWII I don't see why we can't call a 9 inch 30 knot ship "battlecruiser" on our own  |
|
|
|
Post by gornik on Sept 23, 2015 2:38:13 GMT -6
I think the cutoff of 11 inch guns for the BC class is a tad too restricting. After all you can build 9 inch gun predreadnoughts without a problem and those will count as capital ships. I don't see why a ship fast enough with 9 inch weaponry can't be called a battlecruiser. Would probably be a major case of playing the "denominations game", but if the japanese could call an 8 inch belt battlecruiser a "fast battleship" during WWII I don't see why we can't call a 9 inch 30 knot ship "battlecruiser" on our own Problem here would be that if we can do it, AI can do it too, so we'll got tons of tiny BC even in early game, and battles will turn to firework, when "true" BC sink them one after another. Now B can be with 9 in to simulate early coastal defence battleships, and there were no real "coastal defence BB/BC". (BTW, do B count as "battleships" in late game? If yes, you may build tons of CD monitors to satisfy press and politicians, though their real value would be below zero  ) |
|
|
|
Post by Rasputitsa on Sept 29, 2015 2:59:04 GMT -6
Playing GB and setting priority on dock size to enable hulls big enough to combine speed, armour and guns, going for 10", but with maximum number of turrets to increase chances of hits. Although this is a CA, it is more like a pocket battleship, or proto-BC. Armour to encounter battleships, speed to deal with cruisers, enough guns to score hits. I hope. Sacrificed secondary battery (10" should deal with cruisers), just tertiary to handle destroyers. The dock size is increasing and the next class will have 25kts and improved armour layout. I like the way I can commence building to get new ships in the system, but immediately halt construction until the budget can cope, but I don't know what this does to prestige. The concept is that it's better to hit with 10", than miss with fewer 12", or bigger. By July 1903 I have this ship 3 months from completion. Attachments:
|
|
) 
