Hybrid Design Construction

[thesovietonion]

Haven't figured this bit out yet. Are there any special steps to make a hybrid BB/CV?

[garrisonchisholm]

Yeah. I know there are some awesome-weird designs that JS did which should show up circa 1926-33ish, but sometimes I can't make them legal. I'm still trying to climb out of the dark on this.

[jwsmith26]

The only hybrids that I can recall that made it into the water were the Japanese battleship hybrids or their heavy cruiser hybrids. The thing about both of these types was that, as far as I know, they only carried seaplanes. That type of hybrid is absolutely allowed in the game. In fact the hybrid I designed during beta testing would only carry seaplanes.

The issue in RTW2 is that centerline turrets are not allowed with carriers, effectively precluding the dreamed about true aircraft carrier hybrid. There were many of these designed between the wars (even some that envisioned angled decks) so it was theoretically possible, but none were ever considered viable enough to actually build. It's really too bad we can't play around with these types of ships in RTW2. For your entertainment here are a couple of hybrids I designed during beta testing the first is an image of a design I created based on the proposed Soviet hybrid carrier Pobeda.  The second is a home grown CA hybrid design I built for the German navy. 

The Pobeba, BB hybrid

The "Europa", CA hybrid

[dougphresh]

I think they should be allowed, maybe with a weight penalty or greater reduction in deck space.

[elouda]

Good place to start would be to cut spotting value in half (or even down to a third), plus probably extra weight per aircraft. Inability to fire its main battery while launching/recovering planes, and potentially being subject to a similar restriction as the 'under 10000t CVLs' regarding heavy aircraft and catapults might also make sense.

The would be interesting to have, even if they weren't terribly good as a concept (and probably better if the AI avoids them).

[atlanticghost]

May 26, 2019 10:07:35 GMT -6 jwsmith26 said:

The only hybrids that I can recall that made it into the water were the Japanese battleship hybrids or their heavy cruiser hybrids. The thing about both of these types was that, as far as I know, they only carried seaplanes. That type of hybrid is absolutely allowed in the game. In fact the hybrid I designed during beta testing would only carry seaplanes.

The issue in RTW2 is that centerline turrets are not allowed with carriers, effectively precluding the dreamed about true aircraft carrier hybrid. There were many of these designed between the wars (even some that envisioned angled decks) so it was theoretically possible, but none were ever considered viable enough to actually build. It's really too bad we can't play around with these types of ships in RTW2. For your entertainment here are a couple of hybrids I designed during beta testing the first is an image of a design I created based on the proposed Soviet hybrid carrier Pobeda.  The second is a home grown CA hybrid design I built for the German navy. 

The Pobeba, BB hybrid

The "Europa", CA hybrid

Perhaps I just missed it in my sporadic forum viewing, but has there been any explanation given for why hybrids were possible (so it seems) in the beta but not in the final release? Or was it just possible to design them, but not actually possible to build them as legal designs?

[jwsmith26]

The hybrids were built in a period of beta development prior to adding most of the current restriction on carriers, so centerline turrets were allowed.

[archelaos]

I have to admit, I wanted to try the hybrids and was disappointed a bit that they are not allowed.

I guess that, just like in real life, they generated problems with placement in battles - among cruisers or BBs, it would be difficult to launch planes, while among CVs their guns would be a waste of tonnage. And if their respective class was to appear in conditions good for them, those would be bad for almost any other ship of this class.
So to have them we would need to have entire new class with new battle placement and behaviour. A massive coding task. Though maybe "true hybrids" (CAV, BCV, BBV ) will come in an update...

[atlanticghost]

Thanks for clearing that up jwsmith26 - I remembered hybrids from beta posts and I guess I missed when they were made invalid by CV changes. As archelaos describes it, I can understand why it would be very hard to make them work. But I also hope they make a return at some point. Although hybrids would likely be mostly useless, part of the charm of these games is making strange designs and figuring out how to make them work.

[Fredrik W]

Hybrids were deleted from the release version because of the added complexities in implementing realistic restriction on their use. Given that those restrictions would likely have made them unattractive to build, especially as all players have a degree of hindsight, it was better to concentrate on completing other aspects of the game.

Hybrids with plenty of of seaplanes, as pointed out above, are perfectly possible to make in the game.

[mycophobia]

May 27, 2019 12:39:30 GMT -6 Fredrik W said:

Hybrids were deleted from the release version because of the added complexities in implementing realistic restriction on their use. Given that those restrictions would likely have made them unattractive to build, especially as all players have a degree of hindsight, it was better to concentrate on completing other aspects of the game.

Hybrids with plenty of of seaplanes, as pointed out above, are perfectly possible to make in the game.

While Seaplane Hybrids are certainly buildable is it possible to up their spot value a bit or stream line their launching to make it easier to organize airstrike with them? They don't need to be effective or replacing CVs, but having to manually send planes off 1-2 at a time is really making them unworkable for me. I'd have loved trying Seaplane CA/BBs but having to manually launch 1-2 at a time is a bit too much.

[alsadius]

A fairly simple system that could plausibly be used is to have a few different flight deck size options, each of which blocks a certain set of turret mounts. A full deck blocks everything, a port-skewed or starboard-skewed full-length deck allows wing mounts on the other side (but has less space for deck parks and a lower spot value), a half-length deck fore allows aft turrets(but has even less space/spot), and an angled deck might allow a couple turrets to sneak in on the corners. That doesn't do a good job of distinguishing between 6" and 16" guns for blast effects, I'll admit, but you can cap the gun sizes and/or give wider separation between the flight deck and the mounts as appropriate(e.g., nothing more than 10" on a skewed deck, because it's always close to the flight deck, but a half-fore can handle any size as long as you keep them to the aft of the Q mount).

I don't want that before like 1.06 at the earliest, though - there's higher priorities until then.