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Post by kagami777 on Dec 3, 2021 15:29:11 GMT -6
Actually, some battlecruisers BECAME battleships, but yeah battlecruisers were always a flawed idea, and eventually everyone figured it out. Why PAY for something as expensive AS a battleship that was NOT a battleship? You DON'T. At least until Aircraft Carriers came around and just bombed all the naval theories. I would like the game pre-1920 to loosen the restrictions on defining a battlecruiser a bit. Even then, its hard to build a battlecruiser. It'll usually end up a Battleship (the world's first fast battleship!) or a Heavy Cruiser. Really? German battlecruisers were hard to knock, USS Hood was in 20s more powerful than most of battleships .... HMS Hood was a British battlecruiser...
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Post by aeson on Dec 4, 2021 10:26:04 GMT -6
Well to be honest I have had things that should be classed as (F)BB get classed as BC. A 90000 ton ship with 12 16" guns and 44 sec/ter guns 16" belt, 8" deck and 35 knots can get classed as a BC. The thing is in no way a BC but tell the game that Is it not? This is clearly a ship that's put a premium on speed - there's nothing wrong with the armament or the armor protection per se, but for a 90,000-ton vessel there's not really anything noteworthy about those aspects of the ship, either, except perhaps that they're on the lighter end of what you'd expect to see on something of this scale - and a ship with a more reasonable design speed of 30 knots could probably shave at least ten or fifteen thousand tons off the design displacement without sacrificing pretty much anything else. Put another way, something like this would be to a Montana what Hood was to Queen Elizabeth - two ships with essentially the same armament and armor protection, but the former significantly larger than the latter for more or less the sole purpose of achieving a higher speed.
It should also be remembered that there was a time in the real world when the British, for example, called any capital ship faster than ~25 knots a battlecruiser regardless of its other capabilities. What makes a battleship a battleship and a battlecruiser a battlecruiser depends on who and when you ask the question, and while the "conventional" image of a battlecruiser is a fast ship that's armed about as well as a contemporary battleship but sacrifices armor protection to achieve its speed this really isn't universally true - German battlecruisers tended to be armored about as well as contemporary battleships but carried fewer, lighter guns and usually weren't quite as much faster than contemporary battleships as their British counterparts while Hood was essentially a Queen Elizabeth or an R writ large to achieve a very high speed, for example.
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euchrejack
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Post by euchrejack on Dec 7, 2021 19:28:44 GMT -6
So, for German Battlecruisers, we're talking the Deutschland-class right? Or are we talking other German ships as well? The Deutschland was created by treaty, and a very good ship with the treaty in mind. Not the ship to build if you don't have to fit within treaty regulations, I wager.
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Post by aeson on Dec 7, 2021 20:16:04 GMT -6
So, for German Battlecruisers, we're talking the Deutschland-class right? Or are we talking other German ships as well? The Deutschland was created by treaty, and a very good ship with the treaty in mind. Not the ship to build if you don't have to fit within treaty regulations, I wager. If you are talking to me, I was referring to the First World War battlecruisers; the interbellum Deutschland class is much closer to being a heavy cruiser than a battlecruiser and isn't remotely armored well enough to be on par with battleships.
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stww2
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Post by stww2 on Dec 8, 2021 11:34:46 GMT -6
Indeed, I very much learned this the hard way when playing as the British in Steam and Iron.
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indy
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Post by indy on Dec 9, 2021 0:03:14 GMT -6
I think maybe my original point has been lost as this thread evolves. What I originally complained about was that I don’t think it’s okay that rtw2 arbitrarily forces upon me a design parameter that prevents me from building a ship that is competitive to an existing design that is ten years older. The reason I’m unable to make a competitive design is that my empire’s horsepower technology for engines is lacking and therefore I can’t make a ship fast enough to satisfy the design requirement. If I raise the speed of the design, the displacement goes through the roof along with the cost.
This is where the stress kicks in. I’m left with the alternative to reclassify the ship as a BB if I choose to keep its speed slower than a BC requirement to keep displacement and cost down and that throws the wrench in the wheel when having cruiser engagements when an enemy BC is in a sea zone and I don’t have one. I have to forfeit those missions due to the possibility of mission matching facing off my CA’s vs BC’s.
Why can’t I just tick off a box that says I understand that BC’s have a new minimum class speed of 32, yet I wish to ignore this advice on my design Ans build them with speed 31 and then have that be okay?
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Post by itrefel on Dec 9, 2021 4:20:08 GMT -6
I think maybe my original point has been lost as this thread evolves. What I originally complained about was that I don’t think it’s okay that rtw2 arbitrarily forces upon me a design parameter that prevents me from building a ship that is competitive to an existing design that is ten years older. The reason I’m unable to make a competitive design is that my empire’s horsepower technology for engines is lacking and therefore I can’t make a ship fast enough to satisfy the design requirement. If I raise the speed of the design, the displacement goes through the roof along with the cost. This is where the stress kicks in. I’m left with the alternative to reclassify the ship as a BB if I choose to keep its speed slower than a BC requirement to keep displacement and cost down and that throws the wrench in the wheel when having cruiser engagements when an enemy BC is in a sea zone and I don’t have one. I have to forfeit those missions due to the possibility of mission matching facing off my CA’s vs BC’s. Why can’t I just tick off a box that says I understand that BC’s have a new minimum class speed of 32, yet I wish to ignore this advice on my design Ans build them with speed 31 and then have that be okay? I assume you can't do this because of the ai and the battle generator. It has to have some means of estimating a ships capabilities to work out what to do with it/against it - I always assumed (and I acknowledge I don't know this, its just a guess) that the restrictions on ship classes were due to this, if you mess with this you could get some very odd behavoir/outcomes, which would probably be more complained about than the class restrictions. A 30,000t destroyer is an extreme example but it would significantly throw off the system if stuck in screen mode against DDs. There have to be some rules, which do evolve as the game progresses.
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Post by mobeer on Dec 9, 2021 4:45:20 GMT -6
I suspect the real problem is not how the game classifies ships but how the player lacks involvement in doctrine. It would not matter on the ship class if the player could designate that these ships are to be used in a battlefleet only, whereas those ships are to be used as scouts.
For example in real life the Royal Navy's 5th Battle Squadron was used as part of the battlecruiser forces despite comprising only battleships.
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Post by itrefel on Dec 9, 2021 5:47:33 GMT -6
I suspect the real problem is not how the game classifies ships but how the player lacks involvement in doctrine. It would not matter on the ship class if the player could designate that these ships are to be used in a battlefleet only, whereas those ships are to be used as scouts. For example in real life the Royal Navy's 5th Battle Squadron was used as part of the battlecruiser forces despite comprising only battleships.
Thats effectively the same problem, just doing it that way is a different (possibly better - but I am not a programmer!) potential way of handling the same problem, yes.
I was speculating on the overall reason for the class system being how it is, ok the example above of a 1 knot reduction in speed on a BC probably wouldn't matter at all, nor would the 5th battle squadron example there, but there need to be some rules to keep things competitive. This applies to the ai controlling your ships as well remember, but is probably most relevant to the way the mission generator works. The real risk in allowing too much leeway in classifying ships is it risks trivialising the difficulty of the game if the ai/misison generator isn't set up for it.
Again I'm guesing here of course.
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Post by microscop on Dec 9, 2021 8:04:52 GMT -6
Indeed, I very much learned this the hard way when playing as the British in Steam and Iron. Not really true. It kinda ****es me off how much people oversimplify this. German battlecruisers either: same ammount of guns as the contemporary battleship with the same layout but 1 inch smaller Goben/Seydlitz - Kaiser OR same sized guns but 1 turret less Derflinger - Kaiser. Overall German bbs had 11 and 12 inch guns and german bcs also had 11 and 12 inch guns. On some ships they just decided to put same number of guns but lowe caliber instead of reducing the number of guns. All British wwI battlecruisers fallowed the same sized guns but 1 turret less idea. The main difference british battlecruisers put priority on range and speed, thats the biggest tradeoff compared to german ships. Also battlecruisers were not a flawed idea at all and anyone who says that has no understanding of the topic. Armored cruisers were as expensive as a battleship and as large in many cases, battlecruiser was a far more cost efficent evolution of it. Do a very simple logical experiment, how do armored cruisers fare against battlecruisers? Not very well which was proven. Now imagine your fleet screen is made up of armroed crusiers while enemy has battlecruisers or yoru commerce raiders and protection is made up of armored cruisers while enemy has battlecruisers. How does an armored cruiser fare against a battleship? Not very well but it can run away at least. Battlecruiser meanwhile can easily defeat armored cruisers, but depending on circumstance it has more options open against a battleship, it can run but it also has a means to fight. In case of the brirish they had battleline large enough so that battlecruisers could just flank, cross enemy T etc. They also needed them for trade protection etc. In case of Germany they had smaller battleline so they needed battlecruisers that could stand in the battleline and screen the fleet but they didnt use them for long range trade protection etc. Also after ww2 everyone wanted to build new battlecruisers but treaties kileld them. The disapperence of battlecruiser has more to do with treaties and technological progress not everyone fuguring out it was a flawed idea. People who bring jutland up to disprove bc concept dig themsleves even deeper. First of all it was mostly bc on bc fight when most bc were sunk so you can't disprove bc by syaing it was sunk by other bc lol this would be just inability to employ basic logic. Second thing people often ignore are safety procedures which were responsible for those loses.
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Post by aeson on Dec 9, 2021 18:44:02 GMT -6
German battlecruisers either: same ammount of guns as the contemporary battleship with the same layout but 1 inch smaller Goben/Seydlitz - Kaiser OR same sized guns but 1 turret less Derflinger - Kaiser. Overall German bbs had 11 and 12 inch guns and german bcs also had 11 and 12 inch guns. On some ships they just decided to put same number of guns but lowe caliber instead of reducing the number of guns. All British wwI battlecruisers fallowed the same sized guns but 1 turret less idea. The main difference british battlecruisers put priority on range and speed, thats the biggest tradeoff compared to german ships. Seeing as you're seemingly seriously perturbed by oversimplifications and inaccuracies in a video game's discussion forum, might I make a few nitpicks regarding your statements? - Two of the four German battlecruiser classes to actually enter service carry both fewer and lighter guns than the most contemporary battleship designs; of the remaining two designs, one carried lighter guns while the other carried fewer guns than the most contemporary battleship design. If "or" is taken exclusively - which is often the case in conversational English - then "fewer, lighter guns than contemporary battleships" is as accurate a generalization as "fewer or lighter guns than contemporary battleships" when contrasting German battlecruiser designs with the German battleship design most nearly contemporary to each battlecruiser design (50% of the battlecruiser designs have fewer and lighter guns than the most contemporary battleship designs while the other 50% have either fewer or lighter guns than the most contemporary battleship design).
- Goeben was built to the same general design as Moltke, which puts the design more nearly contemporary with Helgoland than Kaiser (the first Helgoland-class battleship was laid down in October 1908, Moltke was laid down in December 1908, and the first Kaiser class battleship was laid down in October 1909). Helgoland carrid a dozen 12" guns in six turrets while Moltke and Goeben carried ten 11" guns in five turrets.
- The designs for Seydlitz (laid down February 1911) and the Derfflinger class (first example laid down March 1912) are probably more nearly contemporary to the design for the Konig class (first example laid down October 1911) than for the Kaiser class (first example laid down October 1909). The Derfflinger class could perhaps additionally be contrasted with the Bayern class (first example laid down December 1913), though given the dates at which the lead ships of each class were laid down I would think the Derfflinger design more nearly contemporary with the Konig than the Bayern design. - The Derfflinger class carrying the same gun as the most contemporary battleship design is possibly an anomaly in later German battlecruiser designs - Seydlitz has 11" guns to Konig's 12" guns, Mackensen would have had 13.8" guns to Bayern's 15" guns, and Ersatz Yorck could have had 15" guns to a hypothetical c.1918 L20's 16.5" guns. As a generalization, then, the later German battlecruiser designs tend to have lighter guns than the most contemporary German battleship designs.
- The Admiral class is very much a British First World War battlecruiser design despite the only completed ship of the class not entering service until 1920, and the most nearly contemporary British battleship design to enter service is that of the R-class battleships. Both the Admiral- and the R-class designs carried eight 15" guns in four turrets, and this was true even before the post-Jutland revisions.
The elephant in the room is that by the time another power - particularly one against which you've been building your fleet - has battlecruisers it is entirely reasonable to expect battlecruisers to be called upon to engage other battlecruisers. The notion that battlecruisers need only worry about slower battleships and inferior armored cruisers was obsolete by the time Indefatigable was laid down; virtually no armored cruisers had been laid down for any of the major navies since Invincible launched in 1907, Germany had already started work on the first two of its battlecruisers, and with the overwhelming majority of extant armored cruisers being little if any faster than the new dreadnought battleships the armored cruisers' ability to serve effectively in a scouting/screening role for a dreadnought battle fleet could best be described as "dubious" and so the idea that battlecruisers were needed to brush them aside could be described likewise.
Additionally, the only ships that Britain ever had in the First World War or its run-up which could be considered suitable to counter the German battlecruisers are the British battlecruisers and perhaps the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships. Generally speaking, a superior force can only expect to bring its average strength to bear against an inferior opponent's peak strength given that the inferior opponent has the ability to choose when to conduct operations, and a reasonable rule of thumb for capital ship serviceability in the First World War is that if you have four or five ships then on average three or four of them are available for operations; thus, to match five German battlecruisers in the North Sea and one in the Mediterranean, Britain needs nine or ten suitable counters - seven or eight in the North Sea and two in the Mediterranean - just to be able to expect to field the same number of ships when a battle actually occurs. Historical dispositions generally fit this model, with six British battlecruisers in and a seventh recalled to the North Sea, two in the Mediterranean, and one serving in a trade protection / raider hunter-killer role at the outbreak of war and Tiger joining the fleet in the North Sea upon commissioning a few months later; it took the disaster at Coronel to pry two battlecruisers free of the Grand Fleet for service in a raider hunter-killer role, and then only for long enough to destroy the main part of von Spee's squadron. If it is reasonable to expect the battlecruisers to be disposed thusly - and, given that the British had no other ships suited to counter the German battlecruisers, I see no reason to believe otherwise - then there is a glaring disconnect between the doctrine and the concept, and a failure to recognize that disconnect is a serious flaw. The Invincibles can perhaps get a pass as the first examples of their type, launched before any other battlecruiser* had so much as gotten off the drawing board, but the Indefatigables, Renown and Repulse as designed (and somewhat more debatably as built), and Lexington do not. It does not matter how many ships you have in your fleet; if only one type of ship in the fleet is suited by speed, armament, and armor protection to act as a counter to a type of ship in an opposing fleet then any examples of the former which postdate examples of the latter really need to be designed with possible use against the latter in mind and a failure to account for that is a serious flaw in the concept of the former.
* Unless you count Blucher or the Japanese Tsukuba and Ibuki classes, but Blucher's more or less just the ultimate expression of the type of ship that Invincible was designed to kill while the Tsukubas and Ibukis combine roughly half of Invincible's armament with less speed and no better than comparable protection. Ironically enough given your argument that the battlecruiser concept was not flawed, this line of reasoning is more or less exactly the line of reasoning that I would use to argue that the battlecruiser concept as expressed by the Invincible class was flawed. After all, if armored cruisers are too weak and battleships too slow to trouble a battlecruiser, then how do you counter a potential opponent who builds one? By building your own battlecruisers.
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euchrejack
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Post by euchrejack on Dec 16, 2021 21:46:36 GMT -6
So, for German Battlecruisers, we're talking the Deutschland-class right? Or are we talking other German ships as well? The Deutschland was created by treaty, and a very good ship with the treaty in mind. Not the ship to build if you don't have to fit within treaty regulations, I wager. If you are talking to me, I was referring to the First World War battlecruisers; the interbellum Deutschland class is much closer to being a heavy cruiser than a battlecruiser and isn't remotely armored well enough to be on par with battleships. Thanks for the clarification. The German WWI Battlecruisers did seem to "counter" their English counterparts successfully. So good ships. My argument about battlecruisers being flawed mainly comes down to the economics, in that why build a battlecruiser when you could build a battleship? But I'll acknowledge that the German examples were probably the best in that concept.
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euchrejack
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Post by euchrejack on Dec 16, 2021 21:51:18 GMT -6
I think maybe my original point has been lost as this thread evolves. What I originally complained about was that I don’t think it’s okay that rtw2 arbitrarily forces upon me a design parameter that prevents me from building a ship that is competitive to an existing design that is ten years older. The reason I’m unable to make a competitive design is that my empire’s horsepower technology for engines is lacking and therefore I can’t make a ship fast enough to satisfy the design requirement. If I raise the speed of the design, the displacement goes through the roof along with the cost. This is where the stress kicks in. I’m left with the alternative to reclassify the ship as a BB if I choose to keep its speed slower than a BC requirement to keep displacement and cost down and that throws the wrench in the wheel when having cruiser engagements when an enemy BC is in a sea zone and I don’t have one. I have to forfeit those missions due to the possibility of mission matching facing off my CA’s vs BC’s. Why can’t I just tick off a box that says I understand that BC’s have a new minimum class speed of 32, yet I wish to ignore this advice on my design Ans build them with speed 31 and then have that be okay? The other issues are that RTW2 doesn't explicitly tell you what you need for a ship to be a Battlecruiser vs. Battleship, and that you apparently get more blockade points for a battlecruiser instead of a battleship. Personally, I've mostly "gotten over" the hurdle and just built the battleship, but sometimes the game wants your battlecruiser to be a battleship, then says its an illegal battleship. That just sucks, since the initial goal was to build a battlecruiser. It helps to take a step back from the historical/ahistorical stuff and realize this game LOVES Heavy Cruisers, and build some Heavy Cruisers. You'll be glad you did, I guarantee!
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Post by aeson on Dec 16, 2021 22:12:28 GMT -6
you apparently get more blockade points for a battlecruiser instead of a battleship. Assuming similarly-large vessels, anything classed as a BB counts for more than anything classed as a BC and both BBs and BCs count for more than anything classed as a B.
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Post by christian on Jan 7, 2022 3:25:13 GMT -6
TLDR: battlecruisers were concepted to chase and sink heavy cruisers and they did that well battlecruisers in line of battle were never as effective as expected though without critical flaws they didn't do too terribly (HMS lion) the WNT made them more important due to the increased prevalence of cruisers and later on carriers which would need them for escort
in RTW battlecruisers are good for the exact same purpose as real life which is sinking cruisers and providing a nice monthly supply of VP due to cruiser sinkings But just like real life the enemy also builds battlecruisers and if your battlecruisers are smaller than theirs yours is likely to loose and get sunk and thus the enemy gets to protect their cruisers from you and sink yours without you being able to retaliate before carriers unless you build your own bigger and better battlecruisers
Battlecruisers made sense for the time period that they were constructed which is around 1907 to 1935 and found new uses post 1942 as carrier escorts though some fast BBs could accomplish this
The whole idea and reason for them is the fact that they are heavy cruisers but with battleship grade armament (an extreme example would be HMS glorious/furious) more normal examples would be a Kongo (1912) or ships like it such as HMS lion the larger the battlecruisers got the more armored they became the battlecruiser concept also changed for the worse and they were built to be more capable in line of battle (something they in reality were probably not the most suitable for)
These ships essentially made light and heavy cruisers irrelevant in skirmishes/raiding An example of this was the battle of the falklands islands in December 8th 1914 where two british battlecruisers three armored cruisers (very outdated and practically useless and also too slow) and a few light cruisers hunted down and sank two german armored cruisers and a light cruisers (with two light cruisers escaping)
The main reason the british battlecruisers exploded was due to Beatty who did everything possible to improve his battlecruisers rate of fire this included disabling some flash protections and storing powder and projectiles in the turrets beyond safe limits What this did was just make turret hits to British battlecruisers blow them up coincidentally HMS lion who had a new crew at the time of jutland did not follow these procedures due to being rather new this also meant that when her Q turret got destroyed she dident turn into a giant fireball like HMS Queen Mary did
Battlecruisers post ww1 were still very relevant due to the WNT the limit to new battleships or heavy capital ships in general meant that the number of cruisers was steadily growing in each navy of both the light and heavy variety on top of this the cruisers became rather fast and rather powerful and the only way to reasonably sink one was with a battlecruiser (no cruisers would ever stick around and fight battleships and a cruiser against cruiser fight had the risk of either side loosing their cruiser and thus carried a very high risk)
For example in the 1930s the only ships in existence in the world capable of catching a 30 knot heavy cruiser was HMS hood, HMS renown or HMS repulse
Generally speaking this will also be shown in RTW
you can play the game without having a reliable way to kill enemy heavy cruisers but you just wont be able to benefit from lower enemy cruiser numbers in fleet battles or monthly victory points form sinking cruisers
the enemy might also use them as raiders and starve you with heavy raiding cruisers and without battlecruisers you have no counter for this
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