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Post by dohboy on Aug 9, 2019 11:49:07 GMT -6
How do you prevent the slow coastal defense BBs from getting tossed into the middle of a battle line and handicapping your front line ships? Do you put them on TP or something?
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Post by lukasdietrich on Aug 9, 2019 12:29:36 GMT -6
How do you prevent the slow coastal defense BBs from getting tossed into the middle of a battle line and handicapping your front line ships? Do you put them on TP or something? I put them on TP. They actually get involved in a lot of battles against cruisers who are raiding. If I am being blockaded I will give them over to the fleet to add to the offensive punch of trying to break the blockade. Often times the speed difference and sheer numbers of them make the AI give them their own formations. |
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Post by kotori87 on Aug 9, 2019 21:55:43 GMT -6
Not really an "ultra-cheap" ship, but I've recently been having great success with Pocket Battlecruisers. These are ~16,000 ton BCs with just two 11" turrets (twin, then triple once researched), high speed, and remarkably heavy armor. My first generation (1906) had 2x2 11" with 25kts and 6" belt. Built five of 'em, originally intended for conversion to CVL, until I fought a bunch of wars with them. Not exactly cheap, due to the expensive engines, but they have certainly earned their keep. On two separate occasions, a pair of them (plus destroyer escort) took on a pair of significantly heavier enemy BCs, and won. Granted, all they really did was hold the line while the destroyers maneuvered into torpedo position, but still... They also routinely intercept raiders, perform coastal raids, and sink enemy cruisers of both the armored and protected/light variety. Most recently, one of them 1v1'd a 1922-era CA bristling with 10" guns. It was a very close call, thanks to some lucky hits, but eventually my pocket battlecruiser prevailed. The ships proved so successful that I have built two new iterations of the design, one in 1922 with 2x3 11" guns, 7.5" belt, and 30kts, and another one in 1928 with the same arrangement but 8" armor, a catapult, and a pair of floatplanes. In battle, I usually see two of them vs one enemy capital ship. Individually they are not as powerful, but together they routinely take on opponents twice their size. Right now my older pocket BCs are on trade protection duties, while the newer ones are in Southeast Asia with my Yamatos trying to chase down the British fleet.
Is it cost-effective? I'm not sure. I do know that they are fun to play with and I've only lost one of them so far.
As for other ultra-cheap ships, under the right circumstances they could be useful. I'm having a hard time imagining what a cheap BB could be used for though.
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Post by dorn on Aug 10, 2019 0:32:18 GMT -6
Two generations of ships. One built as cheap BC to fight enemy large CAs and than can still have firepower to be dangerous even for large capital ships for 82M in 1936.
The second one was built as cheap version to fight only enemy CAs and CLs. It costs 57M. Maintenance costs are even closer 396k:280k for month.
Even CA being 10 years newer using diesel engines is slower, much less armoured intead BC being immune against 10" guns in magazine box and turrets almost completely nd rest of ship has still very reasonable protection against 10" (around 13000-18500 yards). On opposite CA have magazine and turret protection at same ranges as BC citadel protectoin and rest of the ship is armoured only against 6" guns. AA guns have BC a little worse but she has been not refitted yet and with some cheap refit her AA guns could have been much better.
Question remains why build such CA if not for artificial battle generator.
note: My BC fight 2 enemy 17000 tons BC (6x12" guns) withing dusk so at ranges where her armour does not help to protect her and still able to sink one and disengage from the other.
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Post by lukasdietrich on Aug 10, 2019 0:45:59 GMT -6
The Marseille is an impressive ship. 12,000 tons lighter than the Renown. More than double the armor, somewhat worse secondaries and only loses one knot of speed.
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Post by dorn on Aug 10, 2019 1:02:45 GMT -6
The Marseille is an impressive ship. 12,000 tons lighter than the Renown. More than double the armor, somewhat worse secondaries and only loses one knot of speed. They are 2 ships in class. They were answer on several needs together:
1. hunting enemy CAs 2. hunting enemy BCs Graf Spee style 3. decrease of costs by scrapping old capital ships costing almost 1M per month
At the end of 40s they are only 2 of 4 remaining capital ships in world. She was not battle tested much as there are some AI issues in late game with small fleet size.
Relating to comparsion with Renown class you need to take displacement close to deep load than normal load. But Renown class was built in the second half of 10s and have pre-Jutland armour scheme.
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Post by kotori87 on Aug 10, 2019 10:59:47 GMT -6
The Marseille looks very similar to my Pocket BCs, just upscaled a little. Sounds like it's filling the same role too.
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Post by kidcharlemagne on Aug 10, 2019 19:02:47 GMT -6
Your ultra-cheap ships show a significant amount of cowardice unsuitable for a proper admiral. REAL captains build 90,000 ton dreadnoughts, with 20 inch guns and armor 800mm thick. If the economy doesn't immediately crash after suggesting the possibility of making another battleship your navy is hardly one to consider proper. Airplanes aren't going to be very important in naval warfare anyway.
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Post by eskimobrother319 on Aug 11, 2019 12:59:47 GMT -6
I only have RTW1, but have been playing the demo for RTW2 (just waiting till the air stuff becomes easier to manage as the game is hard for me already  ) But in the demo I have experimented with a "Cheap/Small BC" and they were amazing. One issue it did create was it made me feel like without a treaty these cheap BC classes I made made the CA's 100% pointless.  But that was my demo game cheap BC class. If you drop the speed to 28 you can drop the weight to under 18,000 and get the monthly cost to 2,305 from 2,5ish. The improvements I might tinker with is dropping the speed to 28 to add armor get 13 in the belt maybe 13.5. |
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Post by ulzgoroth on Aug 11, 2019 14:36:51 GMT -6
I only have RTW1, but have been playing the demo for RTW2 (just waiting till the air stuff becomes easier to manage as the game is hard for me already ) But in the demo I have experimented with a "Cheap/Small BC" and they were amazing. One issue it did create was it made me feel like without a treaty these cheap BC classes I made made the CA's 100% pointless. But that was my demo game cheap BC class. If you drop the speed to 28 you can drop the weight to under 18,000 and get the monthly cost to 2,305 from 2,5ish. The improvements I might tinker with is dropping the speed to 28 to add armor get 13 in the belt maybe 13.5. Well, there's often a period in the game's naval history where everybody stops building CAs and may even scrap existing stocks in favor of as many BCs as they can manage.
That reverses later on - right or wrong the AI is not much of a believer in battlecruisers against late-'40s aviation.
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Post by jishmael on Aug 11, 2019 23:13:25 GMT -6
I only have RTW1, but have been playing the demo for RTW2 (just waiting till the air stuff becomes easier to manage as the game is hard for me already ) But in the demo I have experimented with a "Cheap/Small BC" and they were amazing. One issue it did create was it made me feel like without a treaty these cheap BC classes I made made the CA's 100% pointless. But that was my demo game cheap BC class. If you drop the speed to 28 you can drop the weight to under 18,000 and get the monthly cost to 2,305 from 2,5ish. The improvements I might tinker with is dropping the speed to 28 to add armor get 13 in the belt maybe 13.5. Well, there's often a period in the game's naval history where everybody stops building CAs and may even scrap existing stocks in favor of as many BCs as they can manage.
That reverses later on - right or wrong the AI is not much of a believer in battlecruisers against late-'40s aviation.
Mostly wrong, in my last run the only nations with a decent amount of bbs and bcs were me(Japan) and the US, everyone else pumped out around 30 CA by 1948, which are unable to fight even an outdated BC and are still not armored or up gunned enough to be superior to smaller CL with 6" autoloaders... So I'd say the late game is pretty much the perfect place for cheap pocket bcs, considering that there's no more competition |
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blur
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Post by blur on Aug 14, 2019 4:21:16 GMT -6
I'm firmly in the expensive overengineering camp. I feel that this is best considering the game's battle setup system. Having 15 BBs matters only when they all see combat, which happens only during the rare fleet battles. Most of the time it's better to have 6-8 that are capable of winning any duel. Same thing with cruisers: if my 16000 ton CA intercepts a 11000 ton CA, it's them who go swimming. It hardly matters if they can have one-and-a-half times the number. Except for the occasional blockade in the first few months of war, which honestly isn't even that bad.
The only time I used cheap ships is to fulfill build orders. But I really have no use for slow monitor Bs that may replace better ships in my battles, so I sent them to the colonies ASAP.
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Post by ulzgoroth on Aug 14, 2019 14:07:57 GMT -6
I've been seeing a lot of fleet battles lately. To my detriment, since I lost (well, extracted a white peace eventually) a war with Britain where I traded most of my pre-dreadnoughts one-for-one with theirs. So everybody has 10 extra semi-obsolete battleships over me now. Which can't hold a candle to my 15" dreadnoughts with 11" armor, but when my battle line is outnumbered 3-1 it's still a bit of a problem.
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Post by tordenskjold on Aug 14, 2019 15:41:12 GMT -6
Well, I don't like cheap ships, but I find stripped-down versions of better ships quite useful. So, the basic approach is to make up the best possible ship in terms of caliber, armor and speed, but then boil it down to 3x2 turrets only and reduced secondaries, and you'll easily save many thousands of tons and millions of bucks, which enables you to field considerably more units.
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 14, 2019 19:05:49 GMT -6
Well, I don't like cheap ships, but I find stripped-down versions of better ships quite useful. So, the basic approach is to make up the best possible ship in terms of caliber, armor and speed, but then boil it down to 3x2 turrets only and reduced secondaries, and you'll easily save many thousands of tons and millions of bucks, which enables you to field considerably more units. Don't reduce the secondaries, though. You need them for anti-destroyer and (eventually) AA work. |
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