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Post by noshurviverse on Mar 27, 2020 18:43:16 GMT -6
I want to throw out some things that might not be a fully coherent or unified argument.
First of all, the research tech for small seaplane tenders (technically seaplane carrier is used, I'm going to say tender to avoid confusing them with traditional carriers) has a date of 1914. To remove the rather strict restrictions upon the size of the seaplane carriers, (which I believe is 5 planes) you need the 1916 tech as well. And in 1918 the tech for CVL conversions is made available. That means that seaplane tenders get roughly a 4-5 year gap between introduction and being challenged by aircraft carriers. Assuming that a war is ongoing, they will likely be working in conjunction with cruiser and capital ship seaplane scouts. In addition, large seaplane tenders often are built in anticipation for CVL conversions.
Secondly, what do seaplane carriers provide for the player in this time period? I have to admit some level of uncertainty here. I have noticed that engagements within the 1914-1920 time period often begin with "classic" meeting ranges, with forces spotting one another within minutes of scenario start, even when seaplane tenders are in a player's force. Outside of having your seaplanes make some ineffective bomb runs, the tender essentially is worthless at that point. Now, what if you get a long-distance spawn? Well at that point it would seem that your seaplane tender now has a point, as you need the seaplane scouts to spot the hostile forces. But there's something strange about this, in that these long-range spawns only begin once you enter into the air age. So what the situation is: seaplane tenders have no application, until the battle generator shifts the scenario generation to make them viable, which does not happen until after seaplane tenders are introduced. (Worth mentioning, this primarily applies to battles other than raids and convoy attacks.) Another thing I must note, relying on spotting reports from seaplanes to determine enemy force composition is not reliable, as the reports are regularly as, if not more inaccurate than pre-battle strength assessments.
Third, what other things could seaplane tenders provide to the player? I think a potential option is to have seaplane tenders (perhaps of a certain size, say, 5000t/10 planes or larger) in an area cause the player to receive more accurate pre-battle assessments, as well as reducing the chances of unexpected battles. Perhaps this could also reduce the penalty for declining a battle, as it is assumed early warning allows the player's military to make preemptive maneuvers to minimize the impact of the action going unchallenged.
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Post by dia on Mar 27, 2020 20:29:41 GMT -6
Is there any value in designing a fast AV that can keep pace with your carriers, with a large a/c complement that can be used to keep your carriers from using any of their own complement for recon? I thought about this today and was wondering how many floatplanes it would need to carry for that to work. And also there's an issue that after a certain point, AV's will simply never show up in battle. I wonder if a high speed would increase the likelihood of AV's showing for battle late game to allow this to work.
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Post by mycophobia on Mar 27, 2020 23:48:47 GMT -6
Is there any value in designing a fast AV that can keep pace with your carriers, with a large a/c complement that can be used to keep your carriers from using any of their own complement for recon? I thought about this today and was wondering how many floatplanes it would need to carry for that to work. And also there's an issue that after a certain point, AV's will simply never show up in battle. I wonder if a high speed would increase the likelihood of AV's showing for battle late game to allow this to work. In that case I personally just stick several recon plane on cruisers, I don't think speed affect AV's ability to show up.
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 28, 2020 5:40:19 GMT -6
But there's something strange about this, in that these long-range spawns only begin once you enter into the air age. So what the situation is: seaplane tenders have no application, until the battle generator shifts the scenario generation to make them viable, which does not happen until after seaplane tenders are introduced. (Worth mentioning, this primarily applies to battles other than raids and convoy attacks.) There is one significant class of pre-aircraft long range spawn that goes back all the way to RTW1: the coastal raid. There is no guarantee that you will contact enemy warships in a coastal raid, and I find that if the enemy is avoiding fleet battles, coastal raids are where I make contact with enemy heavy units most often. Coastal raids are important, and as contact is less of a guarantee than in other battles, this makes effective reconnaissance very important.
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 28, 2020 5:50:07 GMT -6
Is there any value in designing a fast AV that can keep pace with your carriers, with a large a/c complement that can be used to keep your carriers from using any of their own complement for recon? I thought about this today and was wondering how many floatplanes it would need to carry for that to work. And also there's an issue that after a certain point, AV's will simply never show up in battle. I wonder if a high speed would increase the likelihood of AV's showing for battle late game to allow this to work. My carriers tend to be fairly slow by real-world standards, so my AVs tend to be about as fast as my CVs, and significantly faster than my CVLs. I don't recall AVs showing up particularly rarely in the late game, but at the same fine, by then I tend to have floatplanes on everything larger than a destroyer, and to have a few Tone-type cruisers-tenders and Hiei type battle-tender conversions, and catapults minimize the disruption to fleet operations from launching floatplanes, so I've often relegated my dedicated tenders to colonial duties by that time anyway.
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Post by Adseria on Mar 30, 2020 18:02:01 GMT -6
Ok, general opinion seems to be mostly against the idea of dedicated AVs. How about I suggest an alternative option. I'm not expecting people to be too impressed, but I figure I'll throw it out there and see if anyone bites.
So, I've been playing quite a bit of War in the Pacific recently. One thing that works pretty well in that game (at least as the Japanese, who I usually play as) is using carriers in conjunction with scout cruisers. For those who don't know, a scout cruiser is basically a hybrid cruiser/floatplane tender; armament of a small cruiser/large destroyer, cruiser armour, cruiser speed, but capacity for a dozen or so floatplanes. So, I decided to try making something similar in Rule the Waves 2, and this is what I just threw together in a few minutes:
(Since you can't see it: aircraft capacity is 5, with a hangar)
It's December 1913, I literally just unlocked tenders this turn, and I was curious to see what kind of thing I could come up with, given the 5000t, 5-plane limits of early tenders. I'm probably not going to build it (if nothing else, my budget is already oversaturated), I just thought I'd see what people thought of the concept; a seaplane tender/cruiser hybrid. It would obviously never stand up to contemporary cruisers; that's not the point (even legacy cruisers would probably have no trouble sinking this particular design, although it does have the speed to run away). The point of this thing, I imagine (and other, later designs), would be to give a scouting advantage to the fleet, but still be able to support the capital ships against destroyers. Also, as you can see, I went all Japanese and gave it torpedoes; they might at least give it a chance against equivalent and larger ships.
An alternative idea later in the game might be to use these ships as hybrid AV/CLAA ships, with a decent number of 4"/5" DP guns. That way, it could give scouting ability and AA escort ability, and potentially some ability to fight destroyers and small cruisers if necessary.
What are people's opinions? As I said, I suspect uptake won't be high, but I figure I'll throw it out there and see if anyone bites.
And remember, this was just something I quickly threw together, and it was very early in the game; if you took the time to come up with a more serious design, or waited a few years, you could probably come up with something better.
EDIT: Also, please remember that it's not so much about the utility of the specific design shown above as it is about the general concept of a scout cruiser. The design above is just an example.
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Post by aeson on Mar 30, 2020 22:18:09 GMT -6
I am of the opinion that a ship meant to engage destroyers would likely be better served by a larger number of 5" or even 4" guns than a smaller number of 6" guns, especially relatively early in the game when destroyers typically cannot survive that much punishment and 6" and even 5" guns may suffer accuracy penalties against them due to the small size of the ships; similarly for AA escorts. Other than that, I'm a bit doubtful of its utility within the game due to it being unlikely to act like an escort if not manually controlled, and its ability to function as an escort will be somewhat impaired by its need to fall out of formation to launch or recover aircraft - not that that's particularly less true of cruisers fitted to carry floatplanes.
For those who don't know, a scout cruiser is basically a hybrid cruiser/floatplane tender; armament of a small cruiser/large destroyer, cruiser armour, cruiser speed, but capacity for a dozen or so floatplanes. While Scout Cruiser is perhaps not an unsuitable appellation for such a vessel, the historical Scout Cruiser was typically a small, fast, lightly-armed, and lightly-armored cruiser along the lines of the British Active or American Chester classes or the various Italian esploratori (that said, the Omaha-class cruisers - which were large and heavily armed for the time at which they were laid down - were originally designated as Scout Cruisers). A lot of the historical scout cruisers were scrapped shortly after the First World War; many of those which remained or which were built afterwards were at some point reclassified as destroyers, destroyer/flotilla leaders, or light cruisers, depending in part on their capabilities and in part on the preferences of their operators. Due to both their size - rarely more than 4,000 tons, often less than 3,500 - and the time when many of them were built, few if any historical scout cruisers had even rudimentary aviation facilities or sported floatplanes.
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Post by seawolf on Mar 31, 2020 0:41:29 GMT -6
Am I the only person that builds strike AVs? While they’re less effective than a CVL, they’re cheaper and show up in battle more often Even with the 14,000 ton limit an AV with 10+ catapults is quite effective at launching large strikes of floatplanes-Even taken out a few battleships with their 500lb bombs
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Post by forget83 on Mar 31, 2020 1:06:28 GMT -6
I am of the opinion that a ship meant to engage destroyers would likely be better served by a larger number of 5" or even 4" guns than a smaller number of 6" guns, especially relatively early in the game when destroyers typically cannot survive that much punishment and 6" and even 5" guns may suffer accuracy penalties against them due to the small size of the ships; similarly for AA escorts. Other than that, I'm a bit doubtful of its utility within the game due to it being unlikely to act like an escort if not manually controlled, and its ability to function as an escort will be somewhat impaired by its need to fall out of formation to launch or recover aircraft - not that that's particularly less true of cruisers fitted to carry floatplanes.
For those who don't know, a scout cruiser is basically a hybrid cruiser/floatplane tender; armament of a small cruiser/large destroyer, cruiser armour, cruiser speed, but capacity for a dozen or so floatplanes. While Scout Cruiser is perhaps not an unsuitable appellation for such a vessel, the historical Scout Cruiser was typically a small, fast, lightly-armed, and lightly-armored cruiser along the lines of the British Active or American Chester classes or the various Italian esploratori (that said, the Omaha-class cruisers - which were large and heavily armed for the time at which they were laid down - were originally designated as Scout Cruisers). A lot of the historical scout cruisers were scrapped shortly after the First World War; many of those which remained or which were built afterwards were at some point reclassified as destroyers, destroyer/flotilla leaders, or light cruisers, depending in part on their capabilities and in part on the preferences of their operators. Due to both their size - rarely more than 4,000 tons, often less than 3,500 - and the time when many of them were built, few if any historical scout cruisers had even rudimentary aviation facilities or sported floatplanes.
I've read somewhere on the internet that what later became Treaty Heavy cruiser were supposed to be the evolution of WW1 scout cruiser due to the natural "power creep" of naval ship. The Treaty essentially cut off that development line by capping the tonnage limits of smaller cruisers and lumping Battlecruiser into the limited Capital Ships limits.
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Post by jwsmith26 on Mar 31, 2020 11:38:52 GMT -6
Am I the only person that builds strike AVs? While they’re less effective than a CVL, they’re cheaper and show up in battle more often Even with the 14,000 ton limit an AV with 10+ catapults is quite effective at launching large strikes of floatplanes-Even taken out a few battleships with their 500lb bombs Here was my attempt at such a craft in which I pushed the limits to the extreme. It's a bit hard to see in the image but she carried 32 floatplanes. Her 15 catapults allowed a strike group of 15 floatplanes to launch together carrying 500 pound bombs. She was armed with 12 6" guns and a strong DP suite, armored like a large CL and was fast enough to force an engagement or run if needed. I can't say I achieved anything as grandiose as the sinking of a BB with the Albina, but she provided good service, including in surface engagements, until she went down at the hands of an enemy sub. With 32 seaplanes aboard she could launch a full search pattern and still have planes available for offensive purposes. Her planes never made many hits but the disruption to the enemy line during a firefight was definitely appreciated. However, she was extraordinarily expensive for the type and definitely not worth the expense, playing at best, a peripheral role in any combat. At any rate, the rules have changed for AVs and you can no longer build such a magnificent monstrosity.
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Post by seawolf on Mar 31, 2020 12:17:06 GMT -6
Am I the only person that builds strike AVs? While they’re less effective than a CVL, they’re cheaper and show up in battle more often Even with the 14,000 ton limit an AV with 10+ catapults is quite effective at launching large strikes of floatplanes-Even taken out a few battleships with their 500lb bombs Here was my attempt at such a craft in which I pushed the limits to the extreme. It's a bit hard to see in the image but she carried 32 floatplanes. Her 15 catapults allowed a strike group of 15 floatplanes to launch together carrying 500 pound bombs. She was armed with 12 6" guns and a strong DP suite, armored like a large CL and was fast enough to force an engagement or run if needed. I can't say I achieved anything as grandiose as the sinking of a BB with the Albina, but she provided good service, including in surface engagements, until she went down at the hands of an enemy sub. With 32 seaplanes aboard she could launch a full search pattern and still have planes available for offensive purposes. Her planes never made many hits but the disruption to the enemy line during a firefight was definitely appreciated. However, she was extraordinarily expensive for the type and definitely not worth the expense, playing at best, a peripheral role in any combat. At any rate, the rules have changed for AVs and you can no longer build such a magnificent monstrosity. I generally go with a bit less surface armament that makes it significantly cheaper This is in the present version of the game But From experimenting with an equivalent CVL it's clear they are more efficient
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Post by seawolf on Mar 31, 2020 12:19:41 GMT -6
On the other hand, a simple large AV seems to have pretty good strike capacity relative to cost
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Post by dia on Apr 1, 2020 21:20:04 GMT -6
I had something I don't think I've experienced before happen. Cruiser battle, I had two BCs,two CVs and a CVL. Enemy had a BC and I thought two CVs. But they were actually two AVs. The AI actually sent floatplanes on a naval strike. I had to do a double take when I saw the floatplane designation. They sent 10 planes, you don't need me to tell you what CAP did to them.
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Post by aeson on Apr 1, 2020 22:21:27 GMT -6
On the other hand, a simple large AV seems to have pretty good strike capacity relative to cost I'm not sure that I can really agree with you, there; seaplanes don't make for great strike aircraft - they're restricted to relatively ineffective level bombing early on and probably won't be able to carry particularly heavy bombs very far unless perhaps you push bomb load and range in the RFP, and by the time you've unlocked glide bombing they're probably starting to look slow and ungainly by comparison to dive and torpedo bombers while the first generation of good fighter-bombers is probably about to reach the fleet.
Also, while it's probably not a great idea since it might get paired with or deployed in place of better carriers, you can make a CV that's about as inexpensive as and carries more planes than the AV that you showed there: Maybe earlier in the game an AV conducting air strikes with a large air group might be worth it, but certainly by the '50s carrier aircraft are going to make for much better strike aircraft than seaplanes will even if the bomb load carried is similar.
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Post by jwsmith26 on Apr 2, 2020 12:01:08 GMT -6
The type of AV supported in RTW2 was built and operated primarily by the British during WW1. Most did not make it out of the war for the reasons aeson has mentioned - once real CVs arrived it was readily apparent that they were much more effective than seaplane carriers. Most seaplane carriers did not make it out of WW1, typically being converted back to their former roles as ferries or merchantmen. A few nations such as France, built seaplane carriers between the wars but this was largely an economic issue. Between the wars and throughout WW2 many nations built a variation on the original version of the seaplane carrier - the seaplane tender. Most nations built some form of seaplane tender but these ships were especially favored by the Americans and Japanese. A seaplane tender does not operate its seaplanes while at sea and many could not embark seaplanes at all. These ships were meant as movable airbases to support seaplanes providing lodging for the crews, repair facilities and fuel and arms to the planes. Most operated both small single engined floatplane scouts (and for the Japanese floatplane fighters) as well as large flying boats. Seaplane tenders would often operate ahead of the fleet by finding a secluded harbor where they could anchor and service their seaplanes, sending out their seaplanes to search in front of the fleet and to conduct ASW patrols. The Americans generally operated two types - small destroyer sized ships (many were old converted destroyers) that could usually support a single squadron flying boats, as well as large purpose built tenders that typically could support 2 squadrons of flying boats. The Americans built many dozens of these ships in WW2. They provided excellent service, but they were definitely not equivalent to the seaplane carriers seen in RTW2, which existed in quite small numbers (probably about a dozen in total) for a brief moment in history that lasted for about a decade from 1914 to perhaps 1925, after which the French seaplane carrier, Commandant Teste, soldiered on into WW2 as the sole survivor of the type. Meanwhile seaplane tenders grew in popularity and numbers, until their sudden demise at the end of WW2. I find it unfortunate that RTW2 supports seaplane carriers, which beyond a brief period in WW1 never played a significant role in naval affairs, but does not support the much more common and useful seaplane tender.
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