Is "BattleCruiser" a relative size? -- discussion

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
As I predicted, noone is arguing that BC has to be 600 kT.

I think you're challenging someone to argue that fact.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Wanderer:
In 1805, battleships were still called 'ships of the line' and displaced roughly 2,000 tons. In 1916 the average displacement was roughly 25,000 tons and by 1945 there were battleships displacing almost 80,000 tons. To an SE4 race that's only discovered 200kT ships, 200kT probably looks like a battleship, not a frigate.

Wow... in 140 years, what was called a "battleship" got 40 times bigger...

That said, I like Soulfisher's original suggestion of ships getting gradually bigger over time - something like this stripped-down Version of the tech tree might work:

Tech Level 1
Escort I - 100 kT
Cruiser I - 400 kT
Battleship I - 1000 kT

Tech Level 2
Escort II - 120 kT
Cruiser II - 480 kT
Battleship II - 1200 kT

Tech Level 3
Escort III - 150 kT
Cruiser III - 600 kT
Battleship III - 1500 kT

etc.

where each hull size would maintain its maximum engines and other characteristics even as it gets larger and larger...

Oh, and I like SJ's proposal for maintenance costs... now all we have to do is bug Aaron to make maintenance independent of construction cost in SE5!

[Fyron]

Too bad you can't make vehicle sizes obselete.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Too bad you can't make vehicle sizes obselete.

I'm sure that's been posted in the wish list for SEV then, right? If not it should be. This would open up some more modding possibilities.

[Erax]

The reason why aircraft carriers have ruled the seas since WWII is that seagoing ships are vulnerable to torpedoes.

Before the carrier battles in the Pacific, the rationale for building bigger ships was that a bigger ship could carry bigger guns, which would have a longer range and therefore be able to destroy a smaller ship before its guns were able to fire. Torpedo boats changed all that, because they could harm a large ship and were too manoeuverable to be tracked by the big guns.

So a battleship would be surrounded by destroyers, which would fire at any incoming torpedo boats before they could attack the main ship.

Airplanes were a new variation on the torpedo boat concept, and they were so successful that they rendered the battleship obsolete. The modern counter for them is the Aegis cruiser.

So if you want a game universe in which carriers rule the spacelanes, you need a sci-fi equivalent for torpedoes, which is small enough to be carried aboard your starfighters. The Star Wars universe has this, which is not surprising since the concept behind SW space battles has always been 'WWII in space'.

[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.....

[Thermodyne]

So to make the battle cruiser a ship fitting the name, it should have a speed bonus and a limit on the amount of armor and shields that it can carry?

***********************************************

A note on torpedoes: During the second WW, only the Japanese had excellent results with torpedoes. English results were so so and American results were dismal. Most of Japan’s carriers and fleet units fell victim to 2000 pound bombs. American torpedoes were so bad that our interdiction units used skip-bombing to sink the vast majority of the auxiliaries that fell to them. A tactic that would put you very much in harms way against armed ships.

As for Jutland, the battle was fought from the classic “ducks all in a row” formation that was still in favor with the fleet admirals on both sides. With the exception of the scouts, most of the ships that broke formation were MTB’s and MTB-Destroyers, as they were called back then. The German gunnery was excellent, and the English battle cruisers were overly susceptible to shell hits. This was later blamed on the removal of the bLast doors between the magazines and turrets. 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. 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.