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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 3, 2016 0:08:15 GMT -6
Frankly the most absurdly OP early-mid game cruiser ever made, I have destroyed ARMOURED CRUISERS with these things. Did I mention these are 1899 ships? Oh? I didn't? Well they are. Frankly something is wrong here... These things last till the end of the game with a decent refit, and mines. Actually, this isn't so far off from what was actually being built at the time. This is in fact quite similar to the RN's Diadem class of 1895. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diadem-class_cruiserThe Diadems were criticized by those in favor of bigger guns, but in the context of their time, they were actually a pretty good idea. In those days, the QF gun was a new thing and had a much greater ROF than anything bigger. Armor was still pretty weak so armored ships were largely "all or nothing", leaving vast unprotected areas that could be wrecked by HE. This might not let in much water, but it would wreck communications, start fires, take out funnels and ventilators to reduce speed and firefighting ability, etc. No no no no. These things get 25 knots on a 8 kiloton hull (1899 ships getting 25 knots!?) with just about the CAP of armour, with as many guns which will fit on it. NO ship in this period of history was this broken. |
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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 3, 2016 3:29:32 GMT -6
OK, I wouldn't call this a "best" design but it's a fun design. I beg to differ. These things are impossibly fast for its size and time, are large enough to take a torpedo, or heavy gunfire, and armoured enough to take on light cruisers and DD's without damage. They can beat AC's 2 times their size simply by setting fires and spamming HE. And to top it off, they have 'enough' torpedo tubes to double as a heavy early DD. |
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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 3, 2016 8:31:12 GMT -6
 I wasn't kidding when I said those things were OP. One of them did this to a 1920 AC... |
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Post by jwsmith26 on Sept 3, 2016 10:15:31 GMT -6
OK, I wouldn't call this a "best" design but it's a fun design. I beg to differ. These things are impossibly fast for its size and time, are large enough to take a torpedo, or heavy gunfire, and armoured enough to take on light cruisers and DD's without damage. They can beat AC's 2 times their size simply by setting fires and spamming HE. And to top it off, they have 'enough' torpedo tubes to double as a heavy early DD. thatzenoguy, I think you might have quoted the wrong message. Surely you are not commenting on my pathetic little Frauenlob class. |
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Post by Bullethead on Sept 3, 2016 10:18:48 GMT -6
No no no no. These things get 25 knots on a 8 kiloton hull (1899 ships getting 25 knots!?) with just about the CAP of armour, with as many guns which will fit on it. NO ship in this period of history was this broken. Just because nobody made ships quite like this in real life doesn't mean they COULDN'T have. It's just that nobody had a use for such a thing, or the idea hadn't occurred to them. The only way to make your ship work in 1899 with normal engines is to give it both short range and cramped accommodations and no extended armor. With 150rpg and no room to grow, it costs $38.5M and the maintenance is $225K. With "speed" engines, it can have both medium range and normal accommodations with enough displacement left to work in 1" belt extended and a 4" CT. This costs $38.8M with maintenance of $236K, plus the unreliability of the "speed" engines. Or, I could make an 8400-ton AC of 24 knots, normal engines, medium range and normal accommodations, plus fitted for colonial service just for giggles. It has the same 14x 6" guns with the same 150rpg and the same 6 torps, plus a 2ndary battery of 6x 4". I put 4 of the 6" in twin turrets fore and aft, I get 8x 6" on the broadside compared to your 7, although the turrets have a 20% ROF penalty so call it an effective broadside of 7.8x 6" guns. Plus the 6x 4", of course. In addition, it has a 2.5" belt, 1" for both deck and belt extended, a 4" CT, and even 1" on the 2ndary battery. And being a CA, it has the belt+sloped deck armor scheme so the effective belt thickness is much greater due to deck behind it. This ship only costs $35.9M with maintenance of $196K.  -------------------------- it seems to me that the 8400-ton, 24-knot CA is superior to your 25-knot CL in every respect except being 1 knot slower. It has a bigger broadside from the same number of main guns, also has a decent secondary battery, has significantly better armor, doesn't need finicky and expensive "speed" engines to be strategically useful, can survive on foreign stations, and costs about 10% less than your CL. So is that extra 1 knot of speed really worth the drawbacks that come with it? Given this comparison, I wouldn't call your 25-knot CL "broken" or "OP" in the context of the game. Now, there is the separate issue of whether anybody really could have built an 8000-ton, 25-knot CL in 1899. I doubt we'll ever know because nobody did, but it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility given what they could do with CAs at the time. So why didn't anybody do this in real life? The answer seems pretty simple to me---there wasn't a perceived need for a 25-knot CL in 1899. Back in 1899, navies were still organized pretty much the same way as in Nelson's time. The battlefleet consisted almost entirely of 1st rate battleships, each capable of standing in the line of battle against the most powerful enemy ships. There were also a few 2nd rate battleships (aka armored cruisers), slightly weaker but slightly faster, to serve as scouts. Because radio didn't yet exist, they couldn't stray too far afield and were still expected to fight in the battle line. There were also sometimes a few small cruisers, no faster than the battleships, used simply to relay flag signals along the line from the unengaged side. DD flotillas were not yet an integral part of the battlefleet for several reasons. First, they simply lacked the range, reliability, and sea-keeping to maneuver with the battlefleet at sea. Second, there weren't yet submarines to defend against. Now, this all changed in the early 1900s with the introduction of bigger, more seaworthy DDs, and then they needed fast CLs as flotilla leaders for command and control within the fleet. And then radio appeared so fast CLs could also be useful as scouts. But that wasn't the case in 1899. Instead, true "cruisers" (meaning small, light cruisers) of 1899 had the same roles as sailing frigates. They went on long "cruises", hence the name. Their main purpose was the trade war, either protecting or attacking enemy merchant ships in all the oceans of the world. For this they just needed to be slightly faster than CAs so they could run away. Range was much more important to them and they only needed enough firepower to deal with their opposite numbers and AMCs. And, as mentioned above, they could also relay flag signals for the battleline, which didn't require much speed or firepower. So that's the 1899 context. What good would a 25-knot, 8000-ton CL have done for such a navy? That speed had no value to the battlefleet and was excessive for the main jobs of cruisers at that time, especially because it came at the expense of the 3 things cruisers then needed the most: range, reliability, and low pricetag. Price is a real key because navies of the day needed beaucoup small cruisers to give their trade adequate protection. They pretty much had to be everywhere at once. Now, you of course have hindsight. You know that in a few years, seagoing DDs and submarines are going to be a thing. You also know that the game gives you scouting reports far beyond visual range even before there were radios, and you know how the battle generator works. Thus. you're designing a ship for the game's context, not the real world context of the time. The game lets you do it, but at what IMHO is a reasonably steep penalty in terms of cost and strategic value. As a result, I don't consider this ship "broken". |
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Post by tbr on Sept 3, 2016 16:19:57 GMT -6
Could we get a "destroyer leader" respective "scout cruiser" class"? That is a "light" CL with maximum 3500 tons displacement, allowed to be unarmored, DD AI and incorporated in the scenarios as leading ship in DD divisions, with no more than one DL in any DD division, as well as not used in scenarios as "patrol CL"? In different guises such a class was used in many navies from the 1910s or so onward. Might not be feasible in RTW1 but would help in RTW2. |
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Post by Fredrik W on Sept 3, 2016 23:14:43 GMT -6
Could we get a "destroyer leader" respective "scout cruiser" class"? That is a "light" CL with maximum 3500 tons displacement, allowed to be unarmored, DD AI and incorporated in the scenarios as leading ship in DD divisions, with no more than one DL in any DD division, as well as not used in scenarios as "patrol CL"? In different guises such a class was used in many navies from the 1910s or so onward. Might not be feasible in RTW1 but would help in RTW2. Would need different "roles" for cruisers to implement properly. Maybe something for RTW2, some kind of stance has already been suggested for CVEs.
Flotilla leaders are implemented already to a limited extent. If you build such small cruisers as you describe, they will sometimes turn up in DD battles, but they will also be used as regular cruisers.
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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 3, 2016 23:55:56 GMT -6
 4 My typical lategame 'capital ship demolisher' vessel. Shreds everything, and has enough armour to take hits. No secondaries are considered a non-issue thanks to their escort of good CL's. |
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Post by Bullethead on Sept 4, 2016 0:08:35 GMT -6
No secondaries are considered a non-issue thanks to their escort of good CL's. And then Zeno paused in mid-sentence and looked up to see a squadron of divebombers peeling off.....  |
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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 4, 2016 0:11:19 GMT -6
No secondaries are considered a non-issue thanks to their escort of good CL's. And then Zeno paused in mid-sentence and looked up to see a squadron of divebombers peeling off..... Luckily we have no aircraft to deal with. In RtW2, I am SO going to AA the hell out of everything. |
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Post by director on Sept 4, 2016 10:50:48 GMT -6
I don;t recall anyone being able to build 23-knot cruisers and up in 1900. A number of powers did pursue the big, fast cruiser idea - the US, France and Russia come to mind, and Britain built some big, fast cruisers to match them. But speed in a coal-fired ship is really hard to square with high top speed because the boilers are really huge, inefficient and there isn't a lot of space left for coal. Here's an example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Columbia_(C-12)Note the size, right at 8k tons, the speed - 23 knots - and the relatively light armament. But these were considered less-than-fully satisfactory because the ships burned too much coal to be able to cruise at sea for long. Note that both were later reclassified as CA. I understand that the game permits us to build ships that weren't practical or possible in real life. And I applaud the latest trend toward penalizing high-speed designs by requiring a higher commitment of tonnage. But I'm not sure that a 24-or-25 knot protected or armored cruiser, so heavily armed, could or would have been possible to build, and if built they would have been extremely expensive to man and maintain (the reason most big British 'replies' to US, Russian and French cruisers didn't have a long service life. I applaud the creativity - I'll be studying these carefully to see what I can steal LOL. |
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Post by thatzenoguy on Sept 4, 2016 10:58:40 GMT -6
Well, yeah, 8 kiloton 25 knot 16 6 inch gunned CL's in 1899 is rather insane...
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Post by director on Sept 4, 2016 11:33:10 GMT -6
Hey, if the game lets you do it - and you have the budget - and you can get by with a small number of big ships instead of more smaller ones - then it's crazy-smart, not crazy-stupid.
But no-one attempted it in real life; all attempts to drive cruisers faster ran up against the tonnage needed for engines, boilers and coal problem.
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Post by tbr on Sept 4, 2016 12:25:51 GMT -6
Perhaps introduce a secondary "role" classification the player can set (and change in rebuilds). That would provide the player with options navies did use historically, such as when the speeds of older CA's and BC's did not suffice anymore for their original role or when older B's and BB's were sent out to patrol or as convoy escorts. Optionally this could be an additional behaviour setting like today's AF/RF/R/CP/FS. For a CL secondary classifications might be DL-Destroyer Leader, SC-Scout Cruiser, PC-Patrol Cruiser or CL (standard) DL's would be leaders of DD divisions (with DD AI) SC's would scout for B/BB/BC forces in fleet battles and not participate in "cruiser battle" events PC's would patrol and experience all those intercept and "cruiser battle" events and not participate in fleet battles and CL (standard) would have "vanilla" behaviour. For a CA/BC secondary classifications might be B2- 2nd class battleship - participates as part of the B/BB main body in fleet battles ("colonial battleship" with B AI) PC-Patrol Cruiser (as above) SC-Scout Cruiser (as above) CA (standard)-(as above) For a B/BB secondary classifications might be B3 - 3rd class battleship - act as a patrol cruisers (with CA AI), single B3 can from the center of a convoy escort or act as bombardment ships for smaller coastal bombardment missions, do not participate in fleet battles B/BB (standard)- (as above) Could we get a "destroyer leader" respective "scout cruiser" class"? That is a "light" CL with maximum 3500 tons displacement, allowed to be unarmored, DD AI and incorporated in the scenarios as leading ship in DD divisions, with no more than one DL in any DD division, as well as not used in scenarios as "patrol CL"? In different guises such a class was used in many navies from the 1910s or so onward. Might not be feasible in RTW1 but would help in RTW2. Would need different "roles" for cruisers to implement properly. Maybe something for RTW2, some kind of stance has already been suggested for CVEs.
Flotilla leaders are implemented already to a limited extent. If you build such small cruisers as you describe, they will sometimes turn up in DD battles, but they will also be used as regular cruisers.
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Post by archelaos on Sept 12, 2016 4:31:19 GMT -6
"Proto-BC" class that worked very well for me, strong enough to beat ordinary cruisers and fast for legacy ship. I built 3, and a squadron of 2 took part in multiple battles against Japanese (2 wars) and Austria-Hungary, sinking many ships. Same pair also sunk small A-H battleship (B), and later ORP Ukraina alone sunk AH CA and CL in one battle.  And the prettier version, modified in gimp:  BDW, as you see, I made Poland custom nation (Polish-Lithuanian-Cossack Commonwealth, to be precise). If only I knew how to properly modify War info to make it fully fledged custom nation, for now, I simply replaced Russia. |
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