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Post by brygun on Apr 26, 2020 17:54:50 GMT -6
Merchant raiding interception doesnt require large ships nor large guns. Discussion on the Cruiser Light Raider (CLR) is in my strategy guide. Minimum CL size is 2600 tons. If you give it more than the bear minimum then 3,400 is plausible and 4,000 tons is possible. We can call the 3,400 to 4,000 tons as Cruiser Light Small (CLS).
An important way that CLR work vs subs is that CLR >never< trigger passenger liner sinkings that can bring another nation into the war. That can be rather important.
Also the CLR would take enemy CL or CA to intercept. This can confound their defenses in a complementary fashion. Subs are hunted by ASW scores which CL and CA suck at. Its zero for them.
A weakness of the minimal 2,600 CLR is if it gets into a tactical battle. They don't do well at all. Better to run as soon as possible.
CLS can do various roles. In the navy you don't always get the war you were planning. Having additional options can be important. They might also be capable of intercepting enemy raiders. Even if they don't win a battle they might force the raider into port or the battle prevents any sinkings or a non-battle end of turn message comes up of them "thwarting" the raider.
CLS also do good in the pre-airplane age as fleet scouts. Three of them with your main fleet makes a pretty good search line for the start of the battle.
CLS certainly aren't the only type of cruiser to build.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Apr 26, 2020 18:45:56 GMT -6
I know some of you don't agree with my ship design or reasoning. Good, that's what I am trying to accomplish. My primary trade warfare vessel is the medium submarine but it takes while to get to the research point where I can build them and then build enough to takeout my enemy. I have not lost any wars and that is due to submarines. Now, in my first war as Germany with these four ships deployed as raiders, I destroyed twelve transports in three turns, the French gave up due to food riots and I gained two possessions in South Pacific. Does this prove my ideas? Not really, but the CONOPS is to use these and smaller ship until I can deploy enough medium range submarines. At this point I will update these ships and put them in reserve but in wartime, they will become active fleet ships, not raiders. Again, multipurpose.
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Post by aeson on Apr 26, 2020 19:16:09 GMT -6
Minimum CL size is 2600 tons.
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Post by brygun on Apr 26, 2020 20:00:30 GMT -6
Minimum CL size is 2600 tons.
hmmm.... Maybe it was that my recent design had torpedoes. Game kept wanting to classify 2,500 tons and smaller as DD. edit: Yeah.. it was the torpedoes and sub 2,500 tons that get swapped into the DD classification
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Post by brygun on Apr 26, 2020 20:15:23 GMT -6
hmmm.... Maybe it was that my recent design had torpedoes. Game kept wanting to classify 2,500 tons and smaller as DD. edit: Yeah.. it was the torpedoes and sub 2,500 tons that get swapped into the DD classification Or not.... Im confused now what it wanted to make them into DDs
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 27, 2020 4:52:03 GMT -6
New experiment here. I've said before that I dislike armoured cruisers. I find them expensive and pretty useless in the grand scheme of things. But one does need a pursuit ship in the early game, a role I do normally (reluctantly) fill with a CA.
So I decided to have a go at combining the B and CA roles into one.
As this is a 1900 design, I decided to armour against its own guns as of now with the expectation that the armour is going to become outclassed very soon, even if I managed a 9" belt. Speed is the most important thing with the Resolution capable of 22 knots. As far as armament goes, it's pretty good for the time - my standard armament for the time.
I'd welcome any comments or improvements on this line of thinking as I'm testing it out. I'll post some updates when battles start occurring.
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Post by dorn on Apr 27, 2020 7:42:21 GMT -6
To get the speed to 22 knots, which is questionable quite high, you make your ship vulnerable even to 6" guns. The extended belt is only 2" which means that in standard engagement distance at that time even 6" guns can penetrate them, flooding and slowing ship, so it can happen that by saving armour to get 22 knots, you can lose this advantage even with fire from cruisers. Another thing is that your 7" guns are protected only by 4" which means that armoured cruisers can destroy them and flash fire can occur.
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Post by brygun on Apr 27, 2020 7:51:03 GMT -6
Okay, did some tests.
Deck mounted tubes on 2,500 tons or under will reset for Destroyer
Submerged tubes takes 2,500 tons or more
Without torpedoes you can get CLs down to 2,100
2,500 tons is a bit of sweet spot for moderate speed designs. A few hundred tons with same equipment ends up with more equipment weight (less available tonnage).
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Post by brygun on Apr 27, 2020 7:53:42 GMT -6
I know some of you don't agree with my ship design or reasoning. Good, that's what I am trying to accomplish. Simulations like this are good for testing the what-if ideas. The world, like biological evolution, tends to follow certain paths that it can't really reverse. There can be opportunities by other designs, species, to take advantage of niches that the main path doesn't deal well with.
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Post by brygun on Apr 27, 2020 8:10:30 GMT -6
As this is a 1900 design, I decided to armour against its own guns as of now with the expectation that the armour is going to become outclassed very soon, even if I managed a 9" belt. Speed is the most important thing with the Resolution capable of 22 knots. As far as armament goes, it's pretty good for the time - my standard armament for the time.
I'd welcome any comments or improvements on this line of thinking as I'm testing it out. I'll post some updates when battles start occurring.
7" secondaries get a yellow caution flag from me. I can confirm dorn's concern about flash explosions from large secondaries. My own designs limit secondaries to max 6" as there explosions don't seem to blow up the whole ship. 8" certainly have in my experience. Needs verifing: 16,000 tons might make a carrier conversion. However do not torpedo bulge them if you want to do that. Im just getting back into playing after months away. I recall having similiar plans then having the problem of the now-bulged ship not being able to fit the first carrier conversion limits by the 500 tons added by the torpedo bulge. Speed is decent thought I tend to build starters at 20 knots for more armor though 22 knots has a longer use. Hull armor 7.5" lower end of okay but okay for guns of that age. BE and DE is useful vs destroyer grade and long range secondaries. Nearby explosions won't get through. Medium to heavy guns will penetrate there. The weight to protect against those is too much of a cost. BE protection is used for the ship's funnel. There are hits that get scored as splinter damage to funnel taking a chunk out of your speed. A ~2" BE is good for protecting from that type of damage. The turret armor is a bit concerning for me an extra .5 to 1.5 would make me feel better. Ships might get closer than the closest range listed by the gun data. Turret top armor my guideline is around 1/3 the turret armor. In this case 2.5 or 3. Secondary gun armors is a wide topic of debate. Since I tend to 6" max secondaries I give them 2.5" for an all-weather full turret. 2" or less is gun shields with open back which has the pro of lower weight but cons of exposed backs. Story or roleplay wise the sailors would be better in full secondary turrets (2.5" and up) for fighting in heavy seas. That said heavier secondaries, like your 7", have risk of a secondary flash fire killing the whole ship. Armor needs are higher to protect from this. If you brought the big gun secondaries to the same armor as the main turrets their own weight would be crippling. With many things in design there are trade offs. Those big secondaries for the risk of secondary flash or huge weight. 6" down to 4" secondaries have higher rates of fire for less penetration but won't kill your whole ship on a flash penetration. 3" tertiary is fine. This era that works. Engagement ranges are close. Torpedo ranges are shorter. 3" can hurt destroyers on torpedo runs. There isn't anyway to guarantee vs a whole squadron on a torpedo run anyway.
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Post by rimbecano on Apr 27, 2020 8:19:11 GMT -6
As this is a 1900 design, I decided to armour against its own guns as of now with the expectation that the armour is going to become outclassed very soon, even if I managed a 9" belt. Speed is the most important thing with the Resolution capable of 22 knots. As far as armament goes, it's pretty good for the time - my standard armament for the time. [/div] Yeah, CAs that aren't built to stand in the line of battle are questionably useful, but I've generally had good success with designs meant to go toe to toe with battleships. For the early game, you can still accomplish this while reducing the main battery to 10", as penetration isn't hugely important in the pre-dreadnought era, and I've also had reasonable success with 1x2 12" CAs (which forces you down to a 5.5" belt), though they do tend to have a bit of trouble hitting anything with their main guns in that case.
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Post by rimbecano on Apr 27, 2020 8:26:42 GMT -6
Another thing is that your 7" guns are protected only by 4" which means that armoured cruisers can destroy them and flash fire can occur. I've never seen a flash fire even on an 8" gun that is armored to 4" at this point in the game.
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geroj
Junior Member
Posts: 76
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Post by geroj on Apr 27, 2020 8:57:32 GMT -6
I do not protect casemates at all, they work as ablative armor. 7" are horrible and casemates are inaccurate so I usually just fill whole ship with 24 6" without armor rather than 10 7" with 4" armor. And new meta for early B is uniform narrow belt
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Post by rimbecano on Apr 27, 2020 9:48:53 GMT -6
BE protection is used for the ship's funnel. There are hits that get scored as splinter damage to funnel taking a chunk out of your speed. A ~2" BE is good for protecting from that type of damage. Actually, I've found that the big need for BE/DE before AON is for flooding control. Without splinter protection, hits to the area fore/aft of the main belt, but within the BE/DE region contribute a very significant amount of flooding in a battle line engagement. CLs, including the light, non-line-of-battle end of the CA range, are expendable (-ish for CAs) and less likely to be subjected to heavy fire from ships in their own size range that don't also lack BE/DE, and by the time I'm building proper interwar-style heavy cruisers, AON is a thing, so I generally don't include BE/DE on anything that isn't a battleship, battlecruiser, or capital CA, but I've found by experience that BE/DE is mandatory for capital ships.
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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 27, 2020 10:12:08 GMT -6
As this is a 1900 design, I decided to armour against its own guns as of now with the expectation that the armour is going to become outclassed very soon, even if I managed a 9" belt. Speed is the most important thing with the Resolution capable of 22 knots. As far as armament goes, it's pretty good for the time - my standard armament for the time.
I'd welcome any comments or improvements on this line of thinking as I'm testing it out. I'll post some updates when battles start occurring.
7" secondaries get a yellow caution flag from me. I can confirm dorn's concern about flash explosions from large secondaries. My own designs limit secondaries to max 6" as there explosions don't seem to blow up the whole ship. 8" certainly have in my experience. Needs verifing: 16,000 tons might make a carrier conversion. However do not torpedo bulge them if you want to do that. Im just getting back into playing after months away. I recall having similiar plans then having the problem of the now-bulged ship not being able to fit the first carrier conversion limits by the 500 tons added by the torpedo bulge. Speed is decent thought I tend to build starters at 20 knots for more armor though 22 knots has a longer use. Hull armor 7.5" lower end of okay but okay for guns of that age. BE and DE is useful vs destroyer grade and long range secondaries. Nearby explosions won't get through. Medium to heavy guns will penetrate there. The weight to protect against those is too much of a cost. BE protection is used for the ship's funnel. There are hits that get scored as splinter damage to funnel taking a chunk out of your speed. A ~2" BE is good for protecting from that type of damage. The turret armor is a bit concerning for me an extra .5 to 1.5 would make me feel better. Ships might get closer than the closest range listed by the gun data. Turret top armor my guideline is around 1/3 the turret armor. In this case 2.5 or 3. Secondary gun armors is a wide topic of debate. Since I tend to 6" max secondaries I give them 2.5" for an all-weather full turret. 2" or less is gun shields with open back which has the pro of lower weight but cons of exposed backs. Story or roleplay wise the sailors would be better in full secondary turrets (2.5" and up) for fighting in heavy seas. That said heavier secondaries, like your 7", have risk of a secondary flash fire killing the whole ship. Armor needs are higher to protect from this. If you brought the big gun secondaries to the same armor as the main turrets their own weight would be crippling. With many things in design there are trade offs. Those big secondaries for the risk of secondary flash or huge weight. 6" down to 4" secondaries have higher rates of fire for less penetration but won't kill your whole ship on a flash penetration. 3" tertiary is fine. This era that works. Engagement ranges are close. Torpedo ranges are shorter. 3" can hurt destroyers on torpedo runs. There isn't anyway to guarantee vs a whole squadron on a torpedo run anyway. My thinking on the 7" secondaries was that I needed to hold off CLs while the main battery dealt with battle units (what CAs normally do). I would normally pick 6" at this stage but they were -1 quality and therefore I didn't feel I could trust them. 4" secondary armour was my trade-off - I normally only use splinter protection on early secondaries. I could have used quality 0 5" guns though. Looking back I should have. Ironically enough, its not the secondaries that are the problem. It's the tertiaries. They can't seem to knock a DD back before it launches a torpedo. I've lost 2 of this design to flotilla attacks and they've swallowed quite a few without sinking. So as an improvement, I think I'd knock the 3" battery and swap the 7" for more 5" guns. This should allow for more turret and BE armour without sacrificing speed (which is great). I'd also prefer to cut down overall displacement but that's asking too much I think. I'm refitting them as above at the moment so we'll see if that's any better.
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