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Post by khorne8 on May 9, 2024 13:14:00 GMT -6
Cold War doctrine expected that there was really not going to be a big clash of surface forces. It was going to be much more asymmetric. Soviet surface forces existed to find and kill nuclear armed subs, and protect itself from hunter/killer subs, while long-range bombers served as long-range missile carrying MPAs to threaten US surface forces. US surface forces served to project power against targets ashore while defending themselves against Soviet MPAs. Carrier-based strike against surface fleets dwindled as a result, and in reality even the ability to engage surface-to-surface dwindled in favor of US subs killing Soviet surface forces as a byproduct of protecting US boomers. If anything, in RTW3, MPAs should get buffed with HASMs becoming more effective in range, accuracy, and damage. That being said, there are some exceptions. UK doctrine into the 60s included penetration anti-ship strike capabilities like the Blackburn Buccaneer, and the French Etendard family was to an extent an anti-shipping strike fighter, so much so that the Super Etendard was designed to maximize the use of the Exocet. RTW3 really veers into alternate history in the late game. (Which is good and cool and fun, and shouldn't change.) It depicts a multipolar world in which there's no hegemonic naval superpower against which rivals have to seek radically asymmetric solutions. To the extent that it takes a position, RTW3 seems to argue that in an alternate universe where the multipolar naval world of the first half of the 20th century continued into the second half of the century, surface warfare would have been more of a concern. Which IMHO is probably right! RTW3 is also alternate history in that apparently, in the RTW universe, the uranium atom cannot be split. Fission weapons for tactical naval use and fusion weapons for strategic delivery from naval platforms obviously had a huge effect on how cold war doctrine developed and neither of those things exist in RTW3. I don't think it's theorizing too wildly to say that absent nuclear weapons, conventional surface warfare would have been more prominent. But I agree that at present MPAs are under-modeled. In addition to the HASMs in game at present not really modeling an AS-4, the medium bombers that I can procure in a 1960s save right now seem weaker than the Tu-16, and hugely weaker than the Tu-22. So perhaps MBs should get better stats (and much higher costs) in the late game. But shore based aircraft in RTW3 also seem to be pretty bad at putting together a massed strike. If five airfields under AI management could put together a cohesive strike package of 200 HASM carrying MB + 100 HASM carrying PB + 100 HJF escorts, that would be frightening. And maybe a better representation of what Soviet MPAs were capable of. |
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