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Post by garrisonchisholm on Mar 30, 2024 17:11:01 GMT -6
...& yes, I too just noticed that the captain's name is Kirk.
...I have to transfer him to the Enterprise, don't I.
mmm. ... after the war, the Enterprise's captain is Above Average and Lucky, and I don't know anything about Kirk yet.
Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise after the previous commander was mutilated in a horrible accident. Need an "accident" to happen to the current one. A very convenient accident.
February, 1937. After an unfortunate and tragic ... laundry accident, the USS Enterprise has had a new commander appointed. ...& I am glad he is no longer stationed on a ship with large caliber magazines that will offend his need for rapid firing.
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Post by brygun on Mar 30, 2024 18:33:17 GMT -6
Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise after the previous commander was mutilated in a horrible accident. Need an "accident" to happen to the current one. A very convenient accident.
February, 1937. After an unfortunate and tragic ... laundry accident, the USS Enterprise has had a new commander appointed. ...& I am glad he is no longer stationed on a ship with large caliber magazines that will offend his need for rapid firing. Captain Kirk, ROF Enthuasiast Now... that seems fitting. "Fire!"
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Post by tendravina on Apr 1, 2024 23:05:11 GMT -6
Just for conversation, these are my early-game "super cruisers" from my current work with the USA. They use the Brandenburg rule regarding -2 quality guns which allow a 3rd turret. When they were launched they could make 23 knots and their BE is 3" while Upper Belt is also 6". They gave excellent service, and are still providing anti-raider work. Yes, a -2q gun is horrible penetrating, but the charge is still large enough to hurt. ...& yes, I too just noticed that the captain's name is Kirk. ...I have to transfer him to the Enterprise, don't I. mmm. ... after the war, the Enterprise's captain is Above Average and Lucky, and I don't know anything about Kirk yet.
Hold up a second, you're still using Q -2 guns in 1935? Those guns (and that ship) needs a break! By the way, for those who don't know, for the Brandenburg exception you can't replace the Q -2 guns with anything Q -1 or above. And I mean anything, not even 8". In addition, I don't think people here dispute CAs before 1903 or so (i.e. when BCs come out). It may also be worth distinguishing between CAs by how they break the BC classification. CAs with BC guns but limited by tonnage before they become BCs (11" or 12" gun ships limited to around 10k displacement, exact value varies by playthrough, which Ive taken to calling Super Cruisers) and CAs with BC tonnage limited by gun size before they become BCs, (10" or less but above the BC tonnage limit, much easier to make faster, which Ive taken to calling Cruiser Leaders) which seem to be what this thread is discussing most. With the former, the limit past which they become useful is being able to mount 4 main guns above 10". With just 2, their weight of fire is far to low to be worthwhile. These ships do quite well against equivalent tonnages of BC from around the same year as well as normal cruisers, but ironically, they seem to struggle quite a bit against the latter type of cruiser, which can easily dictate the engagement with better speed to catch them when their range advantage is meaningless and quickly beat them to death. By the way, the maximal CA displacement is 10000 tons for 12" above 23 knots, 12000 tons for 2x2 11" above 24 knots, and 20000 tons for 10" above 25 knots. You're honestly better just adding 100 tons and calling your CA a BC
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Post by kriegsmeister on Apr 2, 2024 5:09:32 GMT -6
By the way, the maximal CA displacement is 10000 tons for 12" above 23 knots, 12000 tons for 2x2 11" above 24 knots, and 20000 tons for 10" above 25 knots. You're honestly better just adding 100 tons and calling your CA a BC Its actually even more convoluted
A CA can be - 19900T; Any # 10in Guns; Any Speed; 9.5" Belt Armor - 26000T; Any # 10in Guns; Any Speed; 7.5" Belt Armor - 12000T; 6x 11in Guns in Any # Turrets; Any Speed; 7.5" Belt Armor (Panzershiffe Type Heavy Cruisers) - 26000T; 7x Any sized Guns in 2x Turrets; 22kts; 6.5" Belt Armor (Tsukuba Type Armored Cruisers) - 10000T; 7x Any sized Guns in 2x Turrets; Any Speed; 6.5" Belt Armor (Tsukuba but small and Fast)
Its an absolute mess, why can I make a larger 10in armed ship when I thin the belt armor down, I'd actually want to put that extra weight into armor? Why can we even build them so big? The largest Armored Cruisers in history topped out at ~16000T, and the largest heavy cruisers were the Des Moines at 20000T full load, even if you wanted to count the Courageous-class the speed/armament combo would be illegal. Why the dichotomy of speed and size for the Tsukuba types to make either an underarmored slow battleship or tiny fast monitor? Why even limit the size of the Panzerschiffe-type, and even if you are going to limit, the 12k limit is far too low for historical purposes (Full load tonnages were between ~12500-15000T Standard and ~14000-16000T Full, the latter being what the game actually uses). While it is nice for the Panzershiffe to use any combination of turrets (2x3/3x2/6x1/1x4+1x2/etc) why cant this be done with the Tsukuba types, though should be noted that All-forward arrangements are viable for both.
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Post by attemptingsuccess on Apr 5, 2024 7:03:26 GMT -6
Personally I think the problem with Heavy Cruisers is that in Rule the Waves the CA class covers both early battlecruisers and later large light cruisers and generally has to do both roles at once.
Armored Cruisers are capital ships serving the same role as post 1906 BCs, and thus the class uses capital slots and gets very big and heavily armed
Heavy Cruisers are heavy screening ships designed to help kill light cruisers and win the battle between screening forces, this role is smaller, less well armed and is very much a screening role. However, this is irrelevant in game because other CAs that it will face in battle have significantly stronger armament.
Thus we are left with a hull classification that's trying to do two almost opposite missions. It's trying to be a BC, but with less guns and armor, meaning that it will be extremely expensive when compared to its actual effectiveness. It's good in small theatres where BCs aren't present, but in Northeast Europe for example you will face BCs and you will lose. In almost every case you can invest in a BC and get a lot more use out of it.
The Heavy Cruiser as it existed in reality does not exist within Rule the Waves 3. The only reason you would make a near historical CA in game is for trade protection, so that you can get better roles in Auto Resolve. In real life, Heavy Cruisers were designed to be heavy screening ships. The CA helps fight the Heavy and Light cruisers of the enemy. It can't really do this in game because it is simply too large and also has to function in a capital ship role.
These two classes desperately need to be split in two so that CAs aren't fighting for purpose against BCs
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Post by director on Apr 5, 2024 12:10:15 GMT -6
attemptingsuccess- The Washington Treaty series made a complete hash of cruiser definitions, and part of the muddle in RtW, I think, is rooted in the confusion of what cruisers were and were used for, as you mention. I believe the original intention of the Washington Treaty was to limit cruisers to a 6" armament: scout cruisers, in other words. But some countries had ships (or were building them) with a larger armament (I'm looking at you, Hawkins class!) so there came an artificial division of the cruiser class into 6" and 8" types, with the same limit on ship size but different limits on overall tonnage. Like you, I'm just not sure you can make two cruiser types cover everything from armored cruisers, protected cruisers, scout cruisers, AA cruisers, 8"-gun and 6"-gun treaty cruisers and so on and so forth. The purpose of cruisers changed a lot over the years, with the big armored cruisers of the pre-dreadnought era intended for commerce raiding and/or commerce protection... by WW2, they are the jack-of-all-trades warship. I think the CA tonnage is permitted to grow to such extreme levels to accommodate outliers like the Admiral Hipper class(es) and maybe the Des Moines/Worcester ships. I don't know what the solution is, except maybe to write off the big boys and cut the allowed CA tonnage down to 13-14k tons. And yeah - some tweaking of the mission generator would be nice, but that's a dead horse, and being looked at by the designers also.
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Post by tendravina on Apr 5, 2024 16:39:35 GMT -6
attemptingsuccess - The Washington Treaty series made a complete hash of cruiser definitions, and part of the muddle in RtW, I think, is rooted in the confusion of what cruisers were and were used for, as you mention. I believe the original intention of the Washington Treaty was to limit cruisers to a 6" armament: scout cruisers, in other words. But some countries had ships (or were building them) with a larger armament (I'm looking at you, Hawkins class!) so there came an artificial division of the cruiser class into 6" and 8" types, with the same limit on ship size but different limits on overall tonnage. Like you, I'm just not sure you can make two cruiser types cover everything from armored cruisers, protected cruisers, scout cruisers, AA cruisers, 8"-gun and 6"-gun treaty cruisers and so on and so forth. The purpose of cruisers changed a lot over the years, with the big armored cruisers of the pre-dreadnought era intended for commerce raiding and/or commerce protection... by WW2, they are the jack-of-all-trades warship. I think the CA tonnage is permitted to grow to such extreme levels to accommodate outliers like the Admiral Hipper class(es) and maybe the Des Moines/Worcester ships. I don't know what the solution is, except maybe to write off the big boys and cut the allowed CA tonnage down to 13-14k tons. And yeah - some tweaking of the mission generator would be nice, but that's a dead horse, and being looked at by the designers also. Since CAs also include armored cruisers, which *should* face BCs, it would make sense to divide it into two subclasses, similar to what we have for protected cruisers and true light cruisers. Making a whole new ACR class would also basically do the same thing, to be fair, but that would leave a whole class un-buildable until 1920, which is unprecedented in RTW3 If needed, we can also go the other way, with allowing basically unarmored scout and torpedo cruisers fit into their own class or subclass. We do have protected cruisers, after all.
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Post by wlbjork on Apr 5, 2024 22:11:00 GMT -6
Once again, we come back to Heavy Cruisers being an artificial distinction based on main battery calibre due to treaties. Otherwise, they'd be classed as light cruisers - indeed, AFAIK before the treaties were in place, that's what they were classified as.
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Post by stevethecat on Apr 6, 2024 6:27:38 GMT -6
They have a use, providing they can outrun enemy BCs. If they can't, they aren't worth the maintenance costs.
Better to run away from a battle then try to console yourself with just damaging a few BCs at the cost of a few CAs.
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Post by larcrivereagle on Apr 6, 2024 12:27:42 GMT -6
A CA can be - 19900T; Any # 10in Guns; Any Speed; 9.5" Belt Armor It might just be the Naval treaty that happened around 1916, but I've had great luck building this type of CA. Initially with a single main gun and 30 casemates in 6" and 5" in 14k displacement, but the design kept evolving, eventually sinking a combined total of 3 BCs across two wars (2 were all forward designs with 6x 12" rifles, one was 3 turrets of 2x 12" rifles with one turret aft. The displacement limit of the treaty kept them around 18k displacement, so while their main belts could be 10.5"-12", I suspect considerable sacrifices were made elsewhere). Ironically, their only losses were due to 10 gun 10" heavy cruisers.
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Post by dia on Apr 11, 2024 0:09:12 GMT -6
attemptingsuccess - The Washington Treaty series made a complete hash of cruiser definitions, and part of the muddle in RtW, I think, is rooted in the confusion of what cruisers were and were used for, as you mention. I believe the original intention of the Washington Treaty was to limit cruisers to a 6" armament: scout cruisers, in other words. But some countries had ships (or were building them) with a larger armament (I'm looking at you, Hawkins class!) so there came an artificial division of the cruiser class into 6" and 8" types, with the same limit on ship size but different limits on overall tonnage. Like you, I'm just not sure you can make two cruiser types cover everything from armored cruisers, protected cruisers, scout cruisers, AA cruisers, 8"-gun and 6"-gun treaty cruisers and so on and so forth. The purpose of cruisers changed a lot over the years, with the big armored cruisers of the pre-dreadnought era intended for commerce raiding and/or commerce protection... by WW2, they are the jack-of-all-trades warship. I think the CA tonnage is permitted to grow to such extreme levels to accommodate outliers like the Admiral Hipper class(es) and maybe the Des Moines/Worcester ships. I don't know what the solution is, except maybe to write off the big boys and cut the allowed CA tonnage down to 13-14k tons. And yeah - some tweaking of the mission generator would be nice, but that's a dead horse, and being looked at by the designers also. Since CAs also include armored cruisers, which *should* face BCs, it would make sense to divide it into two subclasses, similar to what we have for protected cruisers and true light cruisers. Making a whole new ACR class would also basically do the same thing, to be fair, but that would leave a whole class un-buildable until 1920, which is unprecedented in RTW3 If needed, we can also go the other way, with allowing basically unarmored scout and torpedo cruisers fit into their own class or subclass. We do have protected cruisers, after all. The more I think about it, the more I am supportive of the idea of CAs being separate from ACRs and not being buildable until later.
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