Best ships and designs

[talbot797]

Feb 14, 2021 10:47:26 GMT -6 w2c said:

So taking the collective advice I've made some changes.

Firstly I cut 2 guns from the main armament. I considered the triple arrangement with 6 in front and 3 in back but as I've yet to unlock improved triple turrets and wasn't sure if the tech simply made it available to existing triples or only for new or redesigned ships after the tech was unlocked and that cutting the additional gun down to 8 gave me even more weight to use for armor I decided to go with that as 8 should be more than sufficient. I also got rid of my tertiary and reduced deck, turret top, and conning tower armor.

All of those changes made it possible for me to bump both my belt and turret armor up to more reasonable levels. Also allowed me to add 10 rounds per gun and add a few extra secondaries and leave a little bit of room to continue to improve my fire control as new tech allows in a few years. Better?

It's very high-spec, but then so was Yamato. So you're adopting the doctrine that one battleship superior to everything else is all that you need? I'd be very interested to see how it performs in reality. I think good design is about a number of things - specification, form, appropriateness, meeting budget constraints, design lifetime.

My first question on this design would be around budget. You're playing as GB, and you're designing a super-battleship in 1914. How many can you afford? The point here being that GB has bases all around the world, you pretty much need a naval presence in each one. I think I counted 11 regions. That's why historically, GB had a lot of cruisers, they covered a lot of area. So to have a reasonable naval presence in every region, you need a lot of ships. So how many of this class do you intend to build, and how many BBs,BCs,CAs,CLs,DDs will it then allow you to maintain in your navy? When I look at a monthly cost of 5178 in 2014, that's pretty eye-watering.

Appropriateness. In 1914, a 24-knot top speed may be slightly higher than most of your enemies, but not much. Given my experience of most battles where I have superior ships, I'd expect the AI to turn and run pretty quickly, meaning you're doomed to chasing and taking pot-shots with your front turrets, hoping to get a good enough hit to take the speed out of the enemy, so you can chase him down and finish him off. Unless you have sufficient speed to run down an enemy comfortably, I would say that you'll be likely to have a lot of marginal victories, and your wars will take a long time to win.

Design lifetime. I think that 24-knot top speed will start to look sluggish by the time you get to around 1925, and then the design starts to become less appropriate. You'll have to adopt battle tactics to corner your opposition so that your lack of top speed doesn't become a liability. Be interesting to see how much time you end up running around at top speed, and how frequently you run out of fuel/end up in the dockyard for a month or two.

I think the other areas look really good. But I'm fascinated to see how it actually performs, and how you balance the rest of your navy around it - because I think you might find that difficult. Please keep us updated!

[w2c]

Well I'm still about a year in game from the first of her class being completed and I doubt the war I'm currently fighting with Russia will last that long but I'll be sure to let you know how she performs when I get an opportunity to use her! That being said I have very high expectations from her so far based on the experiences I've had so far in this playthrough.

For one thing, I'm playing on fleet size 14 so the budget constraints aren't a major factor atm, especially as GB. I currently have 6 of her class building with the first due in 13 months and the last in 28 and I think that's all I'm probably going to build of the base design though I'll probably wind up building another 12-16 of improved variations of her over the next decade by which time I expect her speed will become a major liability and require me to begin redoing the engines of all these earlier designs to push them to 27-28. They're my only current battleships that I expect will be around in 20-30 years with continual work being put into them to keep them viable. Every other current battleship probably only has 10-15 years left in them and I'm already canning every old ship I can justify without risking my ability to maintain a blockade and heavily utilizing MB and reserve during peacetime.

As for my naval presence around the world, I rely heavily on colonial corvettes for that as I have 90 1600 tonners currently in service. I'm relying heavily on dated cruisers and pre dreads to supplement them in times of war though I'm working to build updated models specifically designed for foreign service but focusing on my main battle fleet first. I'm having to replace losses to my fleet CA as a series of unfortunate events saw my previous class essentially wiped out but then I'll be building a cheaper toned down option for lesser colonial and secondary duties. But when it comes to fleet ships meant to act in fleet engagements I want the best. My previous fleet CA's have gone toe to toe with their BC's up to this point and come out on top. It's unfortunate I had to lose them.

And those fleet engagements are where I expect my Elizabeth class to shine. I've fought several such engagements so far and though my ships have outclassed theirs at every point so far theirs are starting to catch up and the fact I've been hamstrung with 13 inch guns has limited the hitting power of my previous ships. I score a lot of hits far exceeding what the enemy manages to deliver and even when 2 of my ships run into 3-4 of theirs it's always theirs that breaks and runs after losing 1-2 of theirs but it takes a long time and if my ships get their speed reduced at all then I can't continue to pursue. These new Elizabeths will be able to shoot more accurately at the engagement ranges I'm fighting at (due to longer ranges in general and the way accuracy works in that regard), they'll hit harder, and the speed will allow me to close to whatever range I'd like and my armor will protect me at whatever range I choose to fight in against everything they currently have to fight back with. I can get into a knife fight if I'd like and do it in relative safety against their weaker guns while absolutely shredding them... I know this because I'm already doing it with my much weaker ships being both much less armed and armored and while they take a few hits the damage differential is hugely in my favor every fight. I won't always be able to knife fight with them of course, especially once the enemy starts putting out better quality ships with heavier armaments but she should perform perfectly fine at greater ranges as well. It's just that she will be absolutely decisive in these knife fights where every hit she lands will be a gut punch while shrugging off their meager return fire.

The only real issue is that these ships will be on their own in a major fleet engagement as the rest of my battle line won't be able to back them up effectively. For that I plan to use my battle cruiser squadron to operate more closely with them as my battle cruisers are actually more like battleships than my enemies actual battleships are at this point in time. 1 squadron of Elizabeths and a BC squadron at this point will likely be able to shred the entire enemy battle line leaving the rest of my battle line to follow along and clean up whatever wounded stragglers I leave in my wake. As more modern BB's of these classes comes online that'll be less of an issue of course and I expect it'll be at least a decade before the enemy starts putting out any kind of ships capable of matching them.

Of course time will tell and I'll let you know!

[hawkeye]

If I may add, in my experience, the Battle Generator tries to balance the numbers of ships in an engagement in all but full on fleet engagements - which makes a quality-over-quantity approach quite viable. At the worst I have been facing 3-4 AI BBs or BCs with 2 or 3 of my own - and since I aggressively expand my yards and also go for a bigger-is-better approach, I usually out-gun and out-armor the AI's design - by a LOT (unless I play Chin China, like currently, then I'm screwed no matter what I do  )

As for having to chase the enemy's battle-line, as I said in an earlier post, that's where your DDs come in. The AI has an almost irrational fear of DDs and you can easily herd their BBs towards your own ones by sending a squadron along their flanks into their rear, approach from there and watch them closing in with your big guns - yes, this is kinda exploiting the AI but then again, torpedo-attacks by torpedo-boats and destroyers was a huge fear in real life.

[w2c]

Yeah I personally try not to take control over all that because I feel it makes things too easy. I play in captain's mode primarily for the VP penalty to give the AI a bit of help on that front, but also so I have the flexibility to make adjustments if a part of my fleet is just doing something stupid but that's basically it. I restrict myself to only controlling the lead squadron for the force, except in fleet engagements where I also let myself control the lead of the BC element as well. I don't control anything beyond that and even when I am in control of a destroyer element as my lead force I only let the AI control torpedo firing and never fire manual primarily for the extra challenge of it.

Anyway I actually have a question. I was considering making a BC variant of my Elizabeth class but the designer is basically forcing me to reclassify it as a BB and I'm curious if anyone could help me understand what exactly the conditions making that happen are? I want it classified as a BC primarily because that's the role I'd have it fill and want them called up in the battle generator. I understand they're basically fast battleships but they're faster than my real battleships and will be serving the role of BC so I'm not sure why I can't classify them as such. Help?

[oldpop2000]

Feb 15, 2021 11:29:34 GMT -6 w2c said:

Yeah I personally try not to take control over all that because I feel it makes things too easy. I play in captain's mode primarily for the VP penalty to give the AI a bit of help on that front, but also so I have the flexibility to make adjustments if a part of my fleet is just doing something stupid but that's basically it. I restrict myself to only controlling the lead squadron for the force, except in fleet engagements where I also let myself control the lead of the BC element as well. I don't control anything beyond that and even when I am in control of a destroyer element as my lead force I only let the AI control torpedo firing and never fire manual primarily for the extra challenge of it.

Anyway I actually have a question. I was considering making a BC variant of my Elizabeth class but the designer is basically forcing me to reclassify it as a BB and I'm curious if anyone could help me understand what exactly the conditions making that happen are? I want it classified as a BC primarily because that's the role I'd have it fill and want them called up in the battle generator. I understand they're basically fast battleships but they're faster than my real battleships and will be serving the role of BC so I'm not sure why I can't classify them as such. Help?

From the Manual

Battlecruiser (BC)

Must have main gun calibre larger than 10 inches and speed more than 23 knots, or three main gun turrets and speed more than 21 knots. In some borderline cases armour thickness can be the difference between a BC and a BB. Speed requirement rises with time, as fast battleships develop.

[w2c]

Yeah I read that too but it's really vague. I had to increase it to 31 knots to get it to stay classified as a BC which seems very high for 1915 and considering each knot would cost more than 1k in displacement really means I can't build the ship I want. It's a bit more heavily armored than a BC probably needs to be but should still be fast enough to qualify considering the date at least in my mind.

Edit: Seems anything over 12 1/2 belt is too much for this BC at this speed. :/ Annoying. 

[oldpop2000]

Feb 15, 2021 12:01:58 GMT -6 w2c said:

Yeah I read that too but it's really vague. I had to increase it to 31 knots to get it to stay classified as a BC which seems very high for 1915 and considering each knot would cost more than 1k in displacement really means I can't build the ship I want. It's a bit more heavily armored than a BC probably needs to be but should still be fast enough to qualify considering the date at least in my mind.

Edit: Seems anything over 12 1/2 belt is too much for this BC at this speed. :/ Annoying. 

Have you tried lowering the belt armor and turret armor and seeing where it takes you. I would also lower the tonnage to say 30000 tons. 

[janxol]

Its the belt. 12.5" is maximum for a BC below 30 knots if I recall. However, making it a 28 knot BB will clasify is as fast BB, which means it will be able to take BC roles in certain engagements.

[w2c]

Yeah, I found the 12.5" cutoff. It's annoying that I don't have any decent 14's or 15's man. I either stick with 13's or jump to 16's if I want any kind of quality in my armament. Game even went and researched 18's for me rather than give me one of the ones I wanted. lol. I wish you could at least direct your researches towards the guns you want prioritized rather than completely random. Unfortunately the 13's don't have the hitting power I'm looking for and the 16's weigh so much and require so much more ship built around them that up the tonnage requirements if I want anything decent. Will have to think on it.

[oldpop2000]

Feb 15, 2021 12:21:32 GMT -6 w2c said:

Yeah, I found the 12.5" cutoff. It's annoying that I don't have any decent 14's or 15's man. I either stick with 13's or jump to 16's if I want any kind of quality in my armament. Game even went and researched 18's for me rather than give me one of the ones I wanted. lol. I wish you could at least direct your researches towards the guns you want prioritized rather than completely random. Unfortunately the 13's don't have the hitting power I'm looking for and the 16's weigh so much and require so much more ship built around them that up the tonnage requirements if I want anything decent. Will have to think on it.

Don't be overawed by 14 or 15 inch guns; 12.5" quality 0 or better are very good for the missions the battle cruisers are assigned. Just keep them away from the larger battleships. Always match the ship design to the mission, this is gospel in military naval history.

[w2c]

My BC's are stronger than any BB's the enemy currently has but that's changing soon. My +1 13" guns have proven decent, they just don't have the stopping power I'd like and the enemy is starting to build 14 and 15 ships which will soon erase the advantages my BC's have enjoyed so far. That being said, I have to work with the army I have so settled with just building a slightly improved version of my previous BC's continuing to use my 13 inchers. They'll be outclassed sooner than I'd like but can always serve overseas duties when that happens. Just hope the game gives me an upgrade of one of those intermediate guns soon.

[janxol]

Why not build a fast BB then? If you want more than 12.5" of armor you're looking for a fast BB not a BC.

[w2c]

I probably should, I'm just unsure exactly how they'll be used. You say they'll take on BC roles in "certain engagements" but I'm not entirely certain exactly what that'll mean or how it'll play out. I figure it might call them up to be used as BC's sometimes but I figure it's just as likely they'll get added to my battle line instead and make the speed arrangements even more awkward then they'll be for the next few years as it is. What I was really wanting was to continue to maintain the advantage my BCs have maintained up until this point in the game. My 2 newest BCs just went up against 3 of theirs, including 2 of their newest plus them having more supporting vessels than I had and yet I sank both of their new ones with only marginal damage returned back on me. That's the advantage my ships currently have, but the enemy ships being built, primarily their BCs, are going to erode my current advantages and I wanted a new ship class in order to maintain my edge. Their new BCs once completed in a year or 2 will completely reverse the trend and outgun mine. My battleships will also be completing in that time so my battle line will be fine, it's my BCs which will lose their advantage that I'm primarily concerned about. If I could guarantee that my fast BBs would be used in the BC role when I needed them to be then I'd be fine and have nothing to worry about but I don't think that's the case.

[janxol]

Fast BBs, if I recall correctly, fill a normal BB role and additionally they can take BC roles, appear in cruiser battles or as carrier escorts. In my experience they tend to get thrown into the BC force first rather than actual battleline (if both are present and you have not-fast BBs). As for battleline speeds, that is up to you, but the way I see it you either build a BC with BC armor or start your first generation of fast BBs. Depend on your goals and needs.

BCs historically are built in one of two ways:
1. Speed first, armament second, speed is armor - armor is secondary. Thats the "british way", big guns on fast hulls but not much protection.
2. Speed first, smaller guns but adequate protection. Thats the "german way", smaller and/or less guns being a sacrifice to provide some armor.
You cant have speed, armor and armament on a BC. Pick two of the three to get a BC (or BB if you dont pick speed). If you want all three, you're describing a fast BB.

[w2c]

lol. Yeah I definitely know the differences, and a fast BB is my preference but I wanted it classified as a BC in order to serve that purpose and not mess with my battleline. If what you're saying is accurate that they'll be prioritized for BC duty as long as I have slower battleline units to fill that role then I have absolutely no reason not to build them. Thanks for that!