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Post by faustzwei on Mar 22, 2021 13:00:46 GMT -6
While the broadside weight isn't wildly different - although somewhat better - to the contemporaries, I do find the turret layout to be more efficient compared to what the other nations are fielding, and even the armor is comparable in some cases, but the speed seems to remain a notable advantage. The way I interpret it is that I skipped the first BB/BC generation entirely, barely coasting along with the two semi-dreads mostly, but am the first when it comes the second generation. I only have some alright(?) intel on said first-gen battlecruisers: The foreign battlecruisers being under construction at the time of the commissioning of the Lissa-s appear to weight 27-28000 tons, I expect them to field a main caliber of no less than 14". I am very glad that I've decided to put in the extra month to switch the 12"(0) with 13"(0) before starting the construction. I agree that even the first gen BB-s can be a threatening prospect to face however. In a way as earlier I've decided to "not deal" with the hostile CA-s out of financial necessity but also the superior enemy battleships commanded caution, now I've decided to still "not deal" with the battleships head-on - but while earlier I had to often let go anything that was stronger and/or faster, now there is only just the 'stronger', and then there isn't a whole lot of that around just yet. Last time I was absolutely unable to crush the opposition, but it was possible to dismantle them slowly, I do hope for something similar with the BCs at hand, but doing so more reliably and with the option to withdraw from an engagement. In a way I thought that starting the BB age with such ships is the safer bet compared to slow 13" dreadnoughts, armor notwithstanding. In the latter case, even the 10kt CA-s would've remained an unsolved issue.
It's really exciting to see what the other nations will be coming up with. This waiting game to see if a strategy pays off is really an interesting part of the game! Thank you for kind words! Well, I modeled it after the Scharnhorst class, but given Roon and Scharnhorst look quite alike and I had a variety of references, maybe I got them mixed up at one point However given that I actually wanted to emulate your style, and failed in that (I could not for the life of me figure out how to set up the lighting in Blender/Cycles to be as nice and clean as e.g. in your great wallpapers... ), it's still is not there yet.
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 24, 2021 14:37:36 GMT -6
...aand that does it for 1910. Phew.
July, 1910
(Historical photograph: 1917, STT Shipyard, Trieste) August, 1910 With the industry in a surprisingly good and capable shape, foreign buyers began to inquire about potential arms procurement. The Naval Section of the War Ministry authorized these deals in order to incentivize industrial development, although not everyone was quite happy for the success of the austrian companies on the international market. Italy for example made sure to point out and condemn this "act of an imperialistic war-merchant".
A bit rude, but oh well - "pecunia non olet." In anycase, although construction methods never were in the focal point when it came to financing R&D, we are at the point where it might be worth to take a look at some cruiser drafts. Should everyting go as planned, the Lissa-class will be able to keep a pace of 27 knots for over 4 hours, and the Leopard-class destroyers appear to have no trouble keeping up with them. The Admiral-class cruisers on the other hand - while just about none of their other parameters leave much to be desired even now - will have serious issues with their 23 knots at flank ahead.
Preliminary studies (under the project name "Ersatz Donau") at the time being are trying to marry the best attributes of the relatively small and most certainly outdated Donau-class armored cruisers and the still very capable Admirals which however lost their edge when it comes to speed. The resulting 8000-ton hybrid is a strange ship and not without any opposition inside the MTK. There are very, very good arguments for "simply" building an enlarged Admiral-class with modernized propulsion (rebuilding the original 5000-ton ships appears to be too costly): the concerns involve the effectivenes and cost of the main armament, the armoring of a now relatively valuable ship, the ship being overly costly for very common wartime tasks, or the fire control of the 15cm secondary suite. Then again, having a ship available that is able to bring 20cm main guns to bear with 28 knots of speed that incorporates the british method of torpedo defense is an intriguing idea nonetheless. An idea which, for the time being, got shelved.
September, 1910
With the longitudinal framing of the hull in mind the Generalschiffbauingenieur is now fairly certain that the keel won't shatter into millions of pieces under the weight of multiple turrets either, even if due to the waves dimensions the strain on the hull will be extremely uneven. With multiple superfiring turrets however the MTK advised to wait at least until the commission of the Lissa-class. If the battlecruisers won't pull off a Vasa a week into their maiden voyage, we may be able to toy with the metacentric height a tad bit more. Design Board - always with the excessive optimism.
October, 1910
The italian newspapers are always very informative. Although the People's Republic of Italy has just laid down the armored cruiser Bolzano, a massive beast if the intel is to be believed with her 19500(!) tons, the journals are still complaining that Italy has "too few cruisers". This made the "Ersatz Donau" project just a bit more interesting. Currently, the drafts are being referred to as "Schwerer Kreuzer" or "heavy cruisers", in order to distinguish their armament type while still keeping in mind that they are not exactly (well-) armored cruisers. Money is still being heavily funneled into the battlecruiser-construction program (forcing a pause on the project), with the rest being spent on research and subsidies for example. Thanks to the latter, Skoda is currently conducting the live fire tests of their new 35cm naval ordnance, and while the results are not exactly over the Moon, Italy is very much interested in it regardless. The gentleman of course got the shell he came for, although in a much smaller bullet-form. Hopefully, no offense was taken.
November, 1910
Probably the most interesting development of the month is that a working - and a properly working, even! - example of a fire control table was presented to the Navy, meaning that the Lissa-class will by and large gain the fire control system that was originally envisioned for them. Retrofitting the older ships with the electromechanical calculator is possible and will be done, although at this point the most significant issue isn't even the table itself, but the transmission of data in a satisfactory manner through the ship. The soul of the calculator is an EU-SV-Anzeiger or Entfernungsunterschied- und Seitenvorhalt-Rechner (Range rate / Deflection Calculator) that is able to relate the relative motion of our own and the target ships in order to produce a range rate and a deflection value for the turrets. The table is able to log various target parameters on a scrolling paper and even take manual corrections into account. There were-, and are some experimental attempts to further automatize the firing cycle, with the most promising equipment perhaps being the Petrevic-type automatic trigger, but these attempts were proving to be not reliable enough for the most part just yet.
December, 1910
In such cold weather the only things that should take a swim in the water are the machines.
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Post by pastur on Mar 25, 2021 21:05:38 GMT -6
Well they may be delayed but the Ersatz Donaus certainly present handsomely in their line-drawing!
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Post by akosjaccik on Mar 28, 2021 5:18:30 GMT -6
Well they may be delayed but the Ersatz Donaus certainly present handsomely in their line-drawing! At this time they are really just the existing Admiral-class with dual turrets slapped on them, not much more than study plans, however this reminded me that it's been a while since I made a poll for anything! I'll attempt to create one.
(Edit: Apologies for the usual bad grammar and typos, Russia built 23000 ton "weak" battleships of course, not 230 kton ones...)
Should we invest resources into their design and construction?
1.) "No, they are a solution looking for a problem, especially for the price." - The ships will cost more than twice as much compared to the current Admirals, and the utility of placing such heavy armament on such a lightly armored hull is dubious at best. They will be too expensive for protected cruisers and too fragile for armored cruisers. Moreover, the fire control of the 6" secondary guns will be unsatisfactory.
2.) "No, because the battlecruisers should relieve the burden of the CruDivs." - The new cruisers may perhaps cost about 33% of a Lissa-class battlecruiser, but would be able to do much less as well. The BCs already provide the solution to most of the problems of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine - so while the cruiser draft isn't inherently bad, it's better to build an extra battlecruiser instead of say, two or three Ersatz Donaus.
3.) "Yes, but with careful investing and not committing too much on them." The Ersatz Donaus may cost twice as much as an Admiral, but won't cost significantly more than a modernized, 28kts cruiser based on the Admiral-layout with 6" rifles, which is ultimately the fair comparison. The battlecruisers may seem like the much more appealing choice, but if the example of the Zenta-class cruisers show us anything, it's that while obsolete capital ships can be too expensive to be used as even just second-line units, cruisers retain their usefulness for a far longer time in a cost-effective manner. By not going overboard with them, the presence of a couple additional heavily armed, high-speed cruisers is favourable. 4.) "Yes, and they should be standardized, scrap all else." - The Donau-class armored cruisers were always subpar and now downright obsolete, the Zentas are barely more than auxiliary units, and the Admirals, while fit for the task, are starting to lag behind the opposition and most certainly won't be able to keep up with the soon-to-formed Battlecruiser Division. The cruiser force requires standardization, the Ersatz Donaus are good candidate for the future's general-purpose cruiser type, and this program should get the topmost priority.
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Post by pastur on Mar 28, 2021 6:47:24 GMT -6
I'm not sure if my response got through to the poll but I'll just post here that option 3 would be my choice. While battlecruisers ideally would be the solution to the requirements of a large fast cruiser suited for all such roles, the fact of the matter is that you have two of them, they are very expensive, and currently Austria's only modern large surface combatants under construction.
Newer faster cruisers are required, and even if notionally less effective than a battlecruiser at the same role, in many cases it may be a question of having a better ship present where an inferior one might be instead-- we don't want encounters between more potent foreign cruisers and a Zenta on coastal patrol, or the SMS Donau wheezing to catch up to a raider which can simply leave it behind.
The need is not immensely pressing yet, so a cautious investment is justified, just a pair of ships to give some more flexibility with cruising missions and to provide the Battlecruiser force with fast escorts, but these will be the start of a modern, high speed cruising division.
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Post by aeson on Mar 28, 2021 8:31:32 GMT -6
While my preference is for 5" and 6" CLs, 8" CLs can work well enough and I would say that the 1910s are probably the period where 8" CLs are at their strongest - the 8" gun's advantage in armor penetration over the 6" gun may actually be relevant against the light armored cruisers being introduced at the start of the period, and CL fire control systems are getting to be good enough that the 8" gun may have a practical (if somewhat slight) range advantage over the 6" gun. Furthermore, it'll probably be ten or fifteen years before modern light cruisers with eight or ten 6" guns on the centerline start to appear, and while early modern heavy cruisers may make an appearance a bit earlier they also tend not to be built in great numbers, so there's a decade-long window where contemporary cruisers will probably only be able to put six or seven 6" guns into the broadside and any other cruiser you encounter is likely to be an obsolete protected cruiser with at best six or seven 6" guns on the broadside or an obsolete armored cruiser with a similar armament to your Ersatz Donau.
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 28, 2021 9:53:53 GMT -6
Unless I'm roleplaying or absolutely, positively need them for colonial duty (which I'd have to roleplay too, since I usually use tons of KE for that), I'm not a fan of CL in general.
If you only have CAs (and I use a "quality over quantity" approach for designing my CA to boot), every cruiser engagement and coastal raid will be filled with your CAs and half the time they will encounter an OPFOR of CLs - which you'll wipe the floor with.
Sure, I have a lot less cruisers over all than the AI - at least at the start of a war - but I haven't encountered any downside to having only, say five or six CA and no CL at all, in fact, quite the contrary, really, since the same CAs will be fighting all the time, they achieve elite status in no time making most fights even more lopsided in my favor.
Since there wasn't an option for "build good CA instead of CLs with illusions of grandeur", I went with option 2, go for BCs.
In my last war (1904 to 1906) I (Germany) started with 8 CA and 0 CL while France started with 8 (three good 12,500 ton, the rest pretty crappy 6,600 ton) CA and 9 CL (half 5,500 tons, half 3,000 tons). During that war, France was reduced to 2 CA and 2 CL while I lost not a single CA and all my CAs that weren't on TP ended the war as Elite.
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Post by ieshima on Mar 28, 2021 10:03:12 GMT -6
This is a hard 1 for me.
While I am a proponent of the theory that armored cruisers are by and large a waste of resources when you can get two or more protected cruisers for the price of one, I would recommend against the idea of an 8" armed protected cruiser and instead recommend using a uniform 6" battery. Four 8" barrels is not enough for consistent hits with the technology limitations you have at the moment, and the costs are most likely prohibitive to build these in any appreciable numbers to make much of a difference. Add in the fact that they will be hysterically outdated within a decade when modern light cruisers come into play and what you are potentially looking at here is a very expensive lemon with limited upgradability.
You would be better off building a faster Admiral class that can keep up with the scouting force and spending the spare cash on trying to coax a few extra knots out of the Donaus and Admirals.
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Post by aeson on Mar 28, 2021 10:23:39 GMT -6
Unless I'm roleplaying or absolutely, positively need them for colonial duty (which I'd have to roleplay too, since I usually use tons of KE for that), I'm not a fan of CL in general. If you only have CAs (and I use a "quality over quantity" approach for designing my CA to boot), every cruiser engagement and coastal raid will be filled with your CAs and half the time they will encounter an OPFOR of CLs - which you'll wipe the floor with. My experience is pretty much diametrically opposed to yours - CAs almost never show up unless they can run into battlecruisers that they cannot reasonably expect to defeat in a daytime engagement while CLs encounter other CLs or CAs, and in my experience a pair of good 5" or 6" CLs handled aggressively can usually defeat one of the computer's CAs without permanent losses even when the CA is over twice the size of either CL while a single 5" or 6" CL still has a reasonable chance of defeating a much larger CA as long as the CL is handled aggressively.
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 28, 2021 13:07:30 GMT -6
This was my experience as well, as long as I had CLs in my fleet. The key to my approach is to not have CL at all. This leaves the battle generator no choice but to take my CA for every cruiser engagement that comes up.
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Post by aeson on Mar 28, 2021 16:37:05 GMT -6
The key to my approach is to not have CL at all. This leaves the battle generator no choice but to take my CA for every cruiser engagement that comes up. I've done that before; I've never found it to be worthwhile. You're replacing a relatively inexpensive unit that's at least adequate for the missions it's called upon to fulfill with a more expensive unit that doesn't really fulfill those missions any better than the less expensive unit does. Furthermore, I've never found a happy median between making a CA big enough to be fast and armored against peer opponents while taking advantage of the 8-, 9-, or 10-inch guns it can carry and making a CA small enough to not be more of a liability when it's caught by a battlecruiser or eats a torpedo while screening heavier ships than it is an asset at other times, especially considering that I already expect to win a significant majority of cruiser engagements with the CLs that I build and so do not see any real need to replace my CLs with more powerful ships to improve performance in cruiser engagements.
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 29, 2021 12:08:04 GMT -6
The key to my approach is to not have CL at all. This leaves the battle generator no choice but to take my CA for every cruiser engagement that comes up. You're replacing a relatively inexpensive unit that's at least adequate for the missions it's called upon to fulfill with a more expensive unit that doesn't really fulfill those missions any better than the less expensive unit does. No, I'm replacing about 3 individually cheaper units with one vastly superior unit that costs pretty much exactly as much than the three cheaper ones combined, and since half of my cruiser/raid/convoy missions are, well, cruisers vs. other cruisers, half of those have one or two of my CA engaging two or three enemy CL - which they wipe the floor with and the other half being somewhat balanced (my CA are usually superior to the AI designs, so I still have an advantage). I just don't see the point of CL, when a smaller number of much better CA are quite sufficient for anything that needs to be done.
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Post by aeson on Mar 29, 2021 14:48:51 GMT -6
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that you build a ship that's half the cost of a decent capital ship to do the job that a light cruiser can do?
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Post by hawkeye on Mar 29, 2021 23:02:10 GMT -6
The vast majority of engagements in a war are cruiser engagements in one form or another.
Question: Why would I add, say, 6 to 8 CL to my fleet and run the risk of losing at least some of them every war when I can build two additional CA and be almost guaranteed victory in that majority of engagements?
BTW, my CA _are_ capital ships, at least until BC come around - they are essentially semi-BC. Later on, they aren't as high-quality, since BC can do what they did earlier and they are more of a support class - and I still don't build CL, since even in a support role, CA are vastly superior. This is, of course, all because the battle generator favors quality-over-quantity in all but fleet engagements.
Now, if I'd use cruisers "realistically" like on foreign station, show the flag roles and stuff, sure, CL would make a lot of sense but my cruisers are there to kill the enemy, period - and for this, my lower number of CA are much, much better than more CL.
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Post by janxol on Mar 30, 2021 3:05:43 GMT -6
For me thats a 3.
I like experimental designs from an RP perspective. And 8" CLs work in game, though one could argue if they work better, they work good enough and have their charm.
From standpoint of RP: With limited budget it is rather questionable whether KuKK can keep up with potential enemies in terms of cruiser force. While the Lissa-class are powerful vessels, they are expensive ships and budget diverted to their construction further limits the means of procuring sufficient number of armored and protected cruisers, while the power of vessels themselves doesn't fully offset the need for more numerous force of cruisers, especially as ships currently in service are showing signs of aging and may well soon be completely obsolete In theory, additional firepower of 20cm guns could provide our protected cruisers with an edge over enemy protected cruisers, which could offset the likely numerical inferiority. Additionally these guns could provide a fighting chance against smaller armored cruisers the enemy may field. This is of course theory and certainly there could be things we cannot predict on paper, as such a careful exploration rather than full commitment to the idea would be the recommended approach. Laying down an experimental class of maximum two ships* to serve as testbed of this concept would be reasonable and it would be only after evaluating the capabilities and identifying any issues in their operation that the final judgement on the idea would be made and decision on whether or not commitment to the concept is an advisable course for the navy.
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