Help with transition to jet/missile age

[menemene]

I'm playing as Germany, just got my first jet aircraft. I'm trying to figure out the best way to maintain my fleet for the future while also being able to fight a war currently. It's 1943. In the late 1920-early 1930 I was in a war with France and completely annihilated their fleet. Then in the early 1940's I got into a war with numerically superior britain but managed to sink enough of their ships in defensive battles to get a victory. The war just ended and I'm trying to figure out how to best restructure.

My current fleet:

Battleships:

6 x 50k+ ton 29-30 knot battleships w/ 17'' guns, the core of the current fleet

2 x 32k ton battlecruisers from 1920 that recently underwent substantial refit. Light on armor by current standards but recently refitted with new engines, upgraded 14'' cannons, 30 knot speed. Want to use these as carrier escorts.

2 x 42k ton battlecruisers w/ 15'' cannon, more recent than the above but haven't had a recent refit so their speed has slowed to 28 knots

4 x 34k ton 23-25 knot battleships with (-1) 15'' cannon from ~1920. Were very good back in the day but now pretty slow. Have not had a full engine/armament refit, max speed I can get with an expensive rebuild is 27 knots.

CA:

1 x 16k ton 30 knot CA, 9x8'' guns

2 x 13.9k ton 33knot CA, 8x8'' guns

The above are operating as a squadron. Just researched autoloading 8'' cannon, might be able to refit them here by dropping the seaplane hangar.

2 x more 14k ton 32knot CA are under construction.

CL:

9 x CL of various classes, ~8k tons, with 6'' (+1) cannon, 30-31 knots. Have not refitted these with autloading cannons, spare displacement is tight.

Have 4 x 12k ton CL @ 34 knots with 9x6'' autoloading guns under construction

And then a scattered array of obsolete single-gun turret cruisers used for trade protection and colonial service

CV:

2 x unarmored fleet carriers, 22k tons, one with 70 AC and one with 90

3 x armored flight deck fleet carriers 38-40k tons, with ~90 aircraft

I have 1 x armored carrier under construction equipped for jet aircraft (55 planes), 44k tons. The above carriers are not jet capable

7 x CVL with 34 aircraft

And then of course a bunch of destroyers/corvettes.

My main questions:

1) How do I know when to stop building battleships? The core of 6 17'' armed vessels is comparable to the best ships in the world, nobody has build anything with either more armor or more firepower. I'm guessing it's best to now focus on carriers and only build new gun-based warships as needed to stay even with other powers if they come out with some bigger ships?

2) With their speed limited to a max of 27 knots with an expensive rebuild, any value in rebuilding the older battleships? 13'' belt, 3'' deck armor, 8 x 15(-1) guns. Per unit it's going to cost about 45k to get them new engines and cannons. Add all four together = 180k, while building another one of the newest 17'' armed ships is ~220k.

3) What's the best way to transition to jet-capable carriers? Other than the new build, all my current vessels are prop only. Maybe leave the 22k ton, older ones as prop vessels while upgrading the bigger armored ones to jet carrier designs? I'm guessing keep the CVL as they are for now, they'd only be able to handle a small number of jet aircraft? Or are the jet aircraft so much more potent that it's worth it to convert whatever you can?

Thanks for any advice, I've never actually made it this far in a game before so I'm not sure what to really expect.

[tendravina]

I think we're missing something massive, how's your DD fleet going? DDs are quite important in the missile age after all

[menemene]

Jan 24, 2024 21:48:13 GMT -6 tendravina said:

I think we're missing something massive, how's your DD fleet going? DDs are quite important in the missile age after all

I have ~45 modern destroyers ranging from 1400-2400 tons, plus 12 large 2600 ton destroyers under construction. 14 obsolete, slower ones used as trade protection.

[staticprevails]

Disclaimer that I usually play a very carrier-focused Japan with medium to large fleet size and limit my sphere of influence to the Pacific, in case that makes any of this not applicable to you. That said…

I’d definitely scrap the four slow battleships, and probably phase out the battlecruisers as well. In my experience the main purpose of battleships is to sink other battleships. Once I can do that with aerial torpedoes for lower cost and less risk, I never build another new battleship regardless of what other navies are doing. I’ll usually keep a core of 4-6 battleships or battlecruisers around into the 40s. Once SSMs and ASMs start showing up, I consider battleships a liability. They’re great at slowing down your surface fleet, giving your opponent damage points to rack up, doing attack aircraft’s job badly at shorter range, and doing cruisers’ job slightly better for several times higher maintenance. Other than that they’re mostly useless.

I would double your destroyer fleet. As soon as you get access to SSMs, destroyers become the most cost-effective ship in the game. SSMs fill a similar role to torpedoes, but with much better odds of hitting a capital ship without getting demolished by its secondary fire. It’s also a lot less galling to have the AI unload half its missile arsenal into one unfortunate destroyer than into a high-value target. (Frankly I’d be terrified of operating such a large capital fleet with so few destroyers even in the 30s or 40s.)

Piston-era CVLs probably aren’t worth converting to jet capability. I’d scrap them as soon as the availability of jet attack/heavy jet fighters makes piston attackers obsolete.

The threshold for carrying jet attack/heavy jet fighters is 30k tons, so I’d rate the 22k carriers as lowest priority for conversion. They could still be useful to load up with light jets for CAP but it may be more cost effective to just replace them. Also make sure you install angled flight decks on big carriers as soon as they are available. I think you can do a jet capable/angled flight deck conversion in 4 months at fairly low cost, so there’s no need to wait for a major refit.

I don’t have any strong opinions on your cruisers. They’re probably fine. Just fit them with SSMs and later SAMs as soon as you get the chance.

[t3rm1dor]

It is hard to gauge without knowing fleet size but:
1) Battleship construction depends on what the other nations are building and your own force. In your case I could probably go for another generation of 33knot battlecruisers for carrier group hunting. Battleships in the late 40's and 50´s are pretty great due to radar blind fire, and the enemy usual ligth oposition, and early missile barrages can usually be deal with either with evasion or baiting then to explode into sacrificial DD. Once SAM is on the table they also get pretty hard to atatck by aircraft, and missile damage is inconsistant enough to make one or two impacts not that threatening .
2) Unless you are going to figth a war very soon, I think it would be better to scrap then.
3) Prop planes have certain advantages over jets, beginning with being cheaper. LFJ can also operate from not jet capable carriers but lack the ability to operate at nigth, so what I do is have on older carriers one wing of ligth figthing jets, another of nigth capable figthers and then torpedo bombers. As long as the enemy doesn't deploy SAM, torpedo bombers with medium missiles are inmune to AA fire, and can pretty much kill any carrier by creating a fire. Jet capable CV should be ones focused on operating JA or CVL for LFJ, and I will also say that once SAM become widespread the effectiveness of aircraft become quite lacking.
Also as a tip, rebuilds are your friends for quickly deploying a missile force, specially on 30´s and onwards desings