Post by rimbecano on May 20, 2016 23:15:11 GMT -6
I'm currently playing a game as Japan in which I have a fleet of 27-knot battlecruisers that have in general been quite competitive with any BB or BC that likely opponents are fielding. At one point, though, I noticed that Russia had a 29-knot battlecruiser with 4 12-inch guns in twin turrets. It's not much of a threat to my battlefleet, but I wanted to build something that could chase it down and eat it for lunch if it started doing any kind of raiding or counter-raiding.
My answer to this problem was the Hiei. My original plan for the Hiei was to also use 4 12 inch guns in two twin turrets. I gave her an inch more armor than the Russian design, and a knot more speed. I wanted to cram this all into as little tonnage as possible to save on cost, so I mounted both turrets forward, A and C, not having tech for B yet (as an aside, it puts me in a bad mood to unlock X before B. My ships should be built to give chase, not to run!), in order to get the weight savings for having all the turrets on one end. Before I had budget room to build Hiei, I unlocked triple turrets, and found I could shave off some tonnage by making A triple and C single instead of having 2 doubles. Then I thought "I bet I could squeeze an extra knot out of this if I eliminated C entirely". And it turned out I could. (This is my general strategy for getting speed into battlecruisers: rather than dropping armor or gun caliber, I drop gun count).
But when I went to save the design, something bizzare happened: The game wanted to reclassify the design from BC to B!!! I had removed firepower and added speed to a battlecruiser, and rather than reclassifying it as something more cruisery (like a CA), the game wanted to classify it as a battleship, and a predreadnaught at that!
What's going on here? According to the manual, nothing over 20 knots is supposed to be a valid B, and this design for Hiei would have clocked a screaming 31 knots, as fast as any destroyer I had yet built, but the game was going to let me, and indeed make me, build the design as a B. Of course, I had to build Hiei with the 30-knot 3-and-1 configuration, because she otherwise would not have been placed in cruiser actions (and would thus be less likely to be able to hunt down her intended adversary), and would have placed in battleship rather than battlecruiser divisions in fleet actions, for which she would be undergunned, unable to make use of her full speed, and woefully underarmored (Hiei is very much a battlecruiser in the British tradition, given that her intended role is to hunt battlecruisers built in that same tradition. I fully expect her to fullfill that tradition in all of its fiery glory should she ever engage anything else).
My answer to this problem was the Hiei. My original plan for the Hiei was to also use 4 12 inch guns in two twin turrets. I gave her an inch more armor than the Russian design, and a knot more speed. I wanted to cram this all into as little tonnage as possible to save on cost, so I mounted both turrets forward, A and C, not having tech for B yet (as an aside, it puts me in a bad mood to unlock X before B. My ships should be built to give chase, not to run!), in order to get the weight savings for having all the turrets on one end. Before I had budget room to build Hiei, I unlocked triple turrets, and found I could shave off some tonnage by making A triple and C single instead of having 2 doubles. Then I thought "I bet I could squeeze an extra knot out of this if I eliminated C entirely". And it turned out I could. (This is my general strategy for getting speed into battlecruisers: rather than dropping armor or gun caliber, I drop gun count).
But when I went to save the design, something bizzare happened: The game wanted to reclassify the design from BC to B!!! I had removed firepower and added speed to a battlecruiser, and rather than reclassifying it as something more cruisery (like a CA), the game wanted to classify it as a battleship, and a predreadnaught at that!
What's going on here? According to the manual, nothing over 20 knots is supposed to be a valid B, and this design for Hiei would have clocked a screaming 31 knots, as fast as any destroyer I had yet built, but the game was going to let me, and indeed make me, build the design as a B. Of course, I had to build Hiei with the 30-knot 3-and-1 configuration, because she otherwise would not have been placed in cruiser actions (and would thus be less likely to be able to hunt down her intended adversary), and would have placed in battleship rather than battlecruiser divisions in fleet actions, for which she would be undergunned, unable to make use of her full speed, and woefully underarmored (Hiei is very much a battlecruiser in the British tradition, given that her intended role is to hunt battlecruisers built in that same tradition. I fully expect her to fullfill that tradition in all of its fiery glory should she ever engage anything else).
