Is "BattleCruiser" a relative size? -- discussion

[Wanderer]

The best way to protect ships from aircraft is with other aircraft. In SE4, a similar maxim would be 'fight fighters with fighters' but that sounds silly. It'd make carriers more powerful if fighters were better at killing fighters and point-defence systems were much weaker (amongst other things).

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
Hmm, we do have "Small Anti-matter Torpedoes", but they're completely useless because the only advantage they have (huge raw damage) is nullified by the fact that fighter damage stacks... did you notice that SAMT's are the ONLY fighter based weapons to do more damage than Emissive Armor III is capable of blocking??? Hmmmmm.....

It'd help if that were fixed and/or fighters were restricted to using seekers/PD weapons.

Plus I'd like to see the armour system revamped...

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
America also had to learn the same lesson the hard way; we built carriers with unarmored flight decks all through the war, as did the Japanese.

American and Japanese carriers could have 50% to 100% larger airGroups because their flight decks weren't armoured and the hangers weren't enclosed (meaning a much larger risk of a fire causing the ship's loss). Also the reduced weight ensured a higher speed. British carriers were much hardier but they didn't have the same punch (having rubbish aircraft for most of the war due to the RAF's intransigence didn't help either).

Out of interest, do people like to build carriers with the largest cargo space/fighter launching capacity possible or do you like to use some space for defences?

Originally posted by Thantis:
I'd also like to see a little more diversity in the AI's ship designs - since we have fleet formations, it would be nice to have true fleet-type units - escorts, missile ships, fleet defense ships, etc.

Would be nice, wouldn't it? Sounds like something SE5 ought to be able to handle.

Thermo again:A few years latter the Hood sank from shell fire that it should have weathered, and its bLast doors were in place! Lots of excuses have been offered, but the hard fact is that deck armor was left out of the design to save money.

The deck armour was thin as the ship was designed and built at a time when bombs dropped from aircraft were miniscule and the main guns of ships didn't have the range to 'plunge' down onto the decks (most WWI ships that fought in WWII had the max elevation of their guns doubled to increase their range). Sadly, the refit that was due to modernise her a more battle-worthy standard was put-off and never happened.

A team actually discovered the wreck recently (they also had to re-discover the Bismarck as Ballard won't tell anyone where he found her) but couldn't offer any clues to her loss other than that both main magazines had exploded, ripping the ship into three pieces. Whether the fatal shell penetrated the belt or deck will probably never be known.