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Post by griffin01 on May 21, 2019 3:20:54 GMT -6
Personally, I find that properly AA-armed battleships with fighter cover from a CV or two are not particularly bothered by airstrikes. Proper deck armour will protect against the few bombs that slip through, and TPIV will make it so that the ships won't even flinch even after several torpedo hits. Meanwhile, 15" or 17" shells can't be shot down.
Remember, big guns never tire.
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Post by janxol on May 21, 2019 3:45:32 GMT -6
once you get carriers with lots of ship killers they become the main workhorse of your fleet, but you still need a few fast BB/BC to keep the enemy away from your carriers, especially since i noticed i never directly control my carriers, i'm always controlling my battleships
Which makes sense. Yamamoto was aboard Yamato in Midway. Halsey's flag was aboard New Jersey at Leyte . Anyway - that's never a problem. Once your main punch shifts from the big guns to the egg droppers and fish lobbers you can get things sorted out easily. By default one of your CV formations will in "support" role of the main surface unit (where your flagship is). The other CV formations (if any) will be with "core" role, following the lead of the already mentioned CV squadron. All you have to do is to change that lead CV squadron's role from "Support" to "Core", just as you would do with a battlesquadron that's following your lead battleship squadron. The CV formation will sail towards your flag squadron (it'll be obviously faster if you turn your flagship towards your CVs), and drag all the other CVs with it. End result is a neat line of CVs besides my proud battleships. Of course if you sail your whole formation into the wind it'll be even better, as that way you avoid having to keep track of all the time the flattops have to do it themselves to conduct carrier ops. Once the sun sets, change the order to "support" again to let the CV sail away from the Battleline. It won't be healty for them if a night battle happens and they turn out to be next to the big guns. I've fought entire carrier fights this way in the mediterranean as AH once I had strong enough carriers. Or rather, I've fought whole battles that way (the only CV the italians ever had...let's say it enjoyed a very short life XD). Bombarding missions have never been as easy, alphastrike the location with an air attack, and then go hunt whatever recon picks up is sailing around. It is more beneficial to leave carriers as support, because they behave differently that surface combat ships. If set to support the carrier division will stay further away from enemy and - what is important - keep fighter screen above your flagship. Any order other than support, the CAP seems to fly only around carriers.
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Post by ramjb on May 21, 2019 3:50:03 GMT -6
It is more beneficial to leave carriers as support, because they behave differently that surface combat ships. If set to support the carrier division will stay further away from enemy and - what is important - keep fighter screen above your flagship. Any order other than support, the CAP seems to fly only around carriers. Which is never an inconvenience if your BBs are sailing besides the CVs, isn't it?. CVs give CAP, BBs help putting up the AAA barrage. I don't like having a surface force in between my carriers and the enemies'. Besides, when you're in confined waters (think the Adriatic, I Was playing as Austro-Hungary) it's not pretty to see your CVs dragging their arses on the dalmatian shore depending on how you maneouver your surface group, trying to keep their position "Behind" them . So during daytime I concentrate my forces in a tight pack. Once night comes, or if the weather makes air ops impossible, then is when I'll release the surface forces. Has worked as a charm for me thus far - doesn't mean you can't just keep them in support, of course. I guess in the end it's down to preference .
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Post by janxol on May 21, 2019 3:52:51 GMT -6
It is more beneficial to leave carriers as support, because they behave differently that surface combat ships. If set to support the carrier division will stay further away from enemy and - what is important - keep fighter screen above your flagship. Any order other than support, the CAP seems to fly only around carriers. Which is never an inconvenience if your BBs are sailing besides the CVs, isn't it?. CVs give CAP, BBs help putting up the AAA barrage. I don't like having a surface force in between my carriers and the enemies'. Besides, when you're in confined waters (think the Adriatic, I Was playing as Austro-Hungary) it's not pretty to see your CVs dragging their arses on the dalmatian shore depending on how you maneouver your surface group, trying to keep their position "Behind" them . So during daytime I concentrate my forces in a tight pack. Once night comes, or if the weather makes air ops impossible, then is when I'll release the surface forces. Has worked as a charm for me thus far - doesn't mean you can't just keep them in support, of course. I guess in the end it's down to preference . Once again there are many ways to play. I didn't think of confined waters. I am playing US right now, so used to pacific and open atlantic. It was just my choice to keep the carrier as far as possible from flying shells.
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Post by ramjb on May 21, 2019 3:59:33 GMT -6
Once again there are many ways to play. I didn't think of confined waters. I am playing US right now, so used to pacific and open atlantic. It was just my choice to keep the carrier as far as possible from flying shells. It's not just for navigational convenience (which is also a big factor for me), it also makes sense from a defensive standpoint in some situation. With clearcut threat vectors where you know where the baddies will come from, if they do, to keep CVs in support might be OK, but if you're operating close to land, with landbases across a whole 180ยบ arc, sending your CAP to cover some BBs might also leave your CVs open for land based bombers to do a pretty free series of attacks on your flattops. And it can be even worse than 180 degree threat arc: for instance in the Mediterranean in one of my ongoing wars vs ITaly I once got my force spawned south of Sicily - which means almost directly north of Tripoli. You see what I mean . bottom point is that there are different tactics for different situations, and each one has it's place and moment to be played out .
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Post by sarastro on May 21, 2019 8:50:08 GMT -6
I was in the process of building my newest BB/BC design weighing in at 60000 tones but after I looked at the cost (230000 for the BB) it just seemed like a waste. For the same cost I can have a CVL and a CV with some money left over. So my question is do surface ships have diminishing returns the later you get into the game or is it just that these large ships are just a waste and I should stick to smaller ships. I'm currently in the year 1940 and I never played RTW 1 so i'm kinda lost, so far building the biggest ships possible worked. My usual strategy is to have BBs with at least equal speed and larger immunity zones than my likely opponents. If they can't hurt your ships, you should win right? I try do build up my ship yard capacity, so rivals can't counter my big ships without investing in docks for years. You can use your carriers defensively and attack mercilessly with your titan BBs at night or if its storming. As an alternative one might go for very fast BCs and CVs which simply flee from big bad ships in bad weather but which are able to fend off speedy CAs.
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Post by kidcharlemagne on May 21, 2019 11:08:58 GMT -6
Carriers and planes? What a load of hocus pocus. True gentlemen stick with massive dreadnoughts with 20 inch guns and 18 inch belt armor slowly advancing at 20 knots (if you want to really focus on speed, of course).
Jokes aside I found 40-46,000 tonnage BB's quite useful well into late game, 16 inch guns are the best balance for RoF, range, and firepower in my experience and your carriers always need protection. Plus, the weather isn't always in the airforce's favor.
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Post by warlock on May 21, 2019 13:06:30 GMT -6
I would say yes. You need a big hunk of steel between your CVs and the enemy that can push back as hard as they push. Also as some mentioned, if you are in a Night Op or there is bad weather, CVs are useless so if you don't have some big BB/BC to carry the engagement your screwed.
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Post by seabass on May 21, 2019 15:17:24 GMT -6
I say build BBs and BCs as the game doesn't provide many missions where you can launch airstrikes. Less than half of the missions have carriers in them and half of those are in bad weather.
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Post by rodentnavy on May 21, 2019 15:28:00 GMT -6
I say build BBs and BCs as the game doesn't provide many missions where you can launch airstrikes. Less than half of the missions have carriers in them and half of those are in bad weather. This certainly makes sense but here large battleships and battlecruisers are not at such an advantage over a relatively cheap but cheerful 12" BC whose guns are still going to go through any armour at typical engagement ranges, that said radar might affect this equation somewhat. The only issue is so far I have not had a radar fight with capital ships involved that was that decisive and while shooting up a French convoy in a storm with a pair of US CLs was fun it does not answer the capital ship scaling issue.
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Post by tordenskjold on May 21, 2019 16:23:19 GMT -6
My experience was that such large capital ships are definitely worth the money in the endgame, since they can take a hell of a beating, draw the attention away from the carrier and finish off their counterparts easily - especially if they have an edge in terms of caliber over those of the other nations. In my first game, most heavy units of the later years sported 16 inches as the main caliber, and it was quite easy to stand out against those with a sufficiently armored, largely immune class which, on top of that, was armed with 17 inches. Oh, and you can save a lot of worthy tonnage through concentration of firepower, e.g. quadruple turrets and all-forward layouts, or even - if you dare - by creation of a design with just one single quadruple turret, which allows you to build amazingly small ships in larger numbers.
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Post by ramjb on May 21, 2019 20:12:27 GMT -6
This certainly makes sense but here large battleships and battlecruisers are not at such an advantage over a relatively cheap but cheerful 12" BC whose guns are still going to go through any armour at typical engagement ranges, that said radar might affect this equation somewhat. The only issue is so far I have not had a radar fight with capital ships involved that was that decisive and while shooting up a French convoy in a storm with a pair of US CLs was fun it does not answer the capital ship scaling issue. The day a 12'' BC gets guns that go through THIS ship's armor at typical engagement range (meaning - as far as I can engage) the day I'll believe in fairy tales . (For the record - the immunity table for 12'' qual 0 guns for that ship is that it laughs at anything beyond 7000 yards). Scaling is not a problem. Overscaling is. The ship I just pasted is a 1936 design (window opened in 1941, that's the reason for the 500 tons of reserve displacement, as completed it was less than 40) and that's a big BB indeed. But that's the apex any really cost-effective BB will go because how expensive it is to go any larger, and how useless it is in the face of air power make any bigger ship/expense not worth it. You can play variations of the theme (maybe 10 guns in twins-over-triples ABXY config once you can shoehorn them in there, 15'' and more armor, or 15x12'', etc). But once you go over 45k tons for big gun ships...it begins not being worth it anymore. BBs do have a place in the lategame (BCs do definitely not, though, once the game classes ships of 27 knots and faster as BBs unless you go unnaceptably short in protection they are just too weak to justify their expense), because as others have stated bad weather and nights play a part. But proper BBs, not overscaled monstrosities which are far too costly to justify their existance. The whole "but at night you can't fly carriers" thing is only valid to a point - you can always withdraw during the night to come back next morning. BBs are there for the occasional situation or event that somehow prevents you from swinging your planes at full power...but that means that they're both your "reserve weapon", and situational. And you don't expend most of your budget in situational assets that only get to play an important role as a backup plan. Not in my fleets, at least.
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Post by goodcaptinkirk on May 21, 2019 21:47:08 GMT -6
Fast BBs/BCs (think something along the lines of Kongo or Iowa) absolutely are still worth it. Having something capable of 30 knots that can resist the guns of 10-inch armed cruisers is extremely valuable to defend your task forces. Or maybe not even a large BB/BC. Just a CA that has enough armor to resist the 10-inch guns of the cruisers the AI spams is more than enough. And of course if you can't afford to build new ones, a slow BB from 1918 modernized to go 30 knots will be more than adequate for the job.
Slow BBs on the other hand aren't worth it past 1950. Pretty much anything that can't be modernized to go 28+ kts should be converted to a CV or thrown out. At least that's my experience so far.
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Post by rodentnavy on May 22, 2019 2:32:45 GMT -6
This certainly makes sense but here large battleships and battlecruisers are not at such an advantage over a relatively cheap but cheerful 12" BC whose guns are still going to go through any armour at typical engagement ranges, that said radar might affect this equation somewhat. The only issue is so far I have not had a radar fight with capital ships involved that was that decisive and while shooting up a French convoy in a storm with a pair of US CLs was fun it does not answer the capital ship scaling issue. The day a 12'' BC gets guns that go through THIS ship's armor at typical engagement range (meaning - as far as I can engage) the day I'll believe in fairy tales . (For the record - the immunity table for 12'' qual 0 guns for that ship is that it laughs at anything beyond 7000 yards). Scaling is not a problem. Overscaling is. The ship I just pasted is a 1936 design (window opened in 1941, that's the reason for the 500 tons of reserve displacement, as completed it was less than 40) and that's a big BB indeed. The issue is in the awkward stage of the 1930s, so pre- widespread radar but air power in numbers being devastating, night and bad weather engagement ranges are likely to be less than 4-5,000 yards. Which given the argument is rather the point. That said I would agree that a good all rounder BB/BC still has a place. That said your cruisers have the advantage that they can be turned out in three quarters the time at half the monthly cost give or take a few arbitrary monetary units. So I have experimented with using a larger number of cruisers as carrier screen rather than BCs especially as an ingame oddity is the tendency to assign BCs as carrier screening units which often means they are never going to be in position for a gun line fight. The BBs being more often deployed as a separate gunline can then be used either as a screen or in a more forwards position as the situation dictates.
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Post by ramjb on May 22, 2019 3:11:28 GMT -6
"night and bad weather engagement ranges are likely to be less than 4-5,000 yards. Which given the argument is rather the point."
Another argument is that 12'' shells won't do half the damage those 16'' monsters will do. You're going to need a lot of hits to disable a ship that size if you're firing with the battleship equivalent of a BB gun.
Meanwhile half a dozen of those shells at point blank will directly wreck a 25k ship and stop it cold.
Is as simple as that, a 47000 ton vessel shrugs off damage far better than a far lighter guy. If the lighter guy is shooting with 12'' puny guns while you're shooting at him with 16 inchers, guess who's going to get crushed sooner.
By night, pre-radar and in the late 30s stages you mention, a 12'' gunned puny ship is lunch for this ship and doesn't worry me the slightest. What DOES worry me in that circunstance would be a couple destroyers...but even then it has a level 3 torpedo protection so it can shrug a couple of torpedoes no problem.
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