Is "BattleCruiser" a relative size? -- discussion

[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.

[Erax]

You are right about the torpedoes, although IIRC the quality of the torpedoes themselves were only one part of the problem for the Americans, the other part was that their torpedo bombers were too slow and therefore an easy target for enemy AA fire.

Unarmored carriers made for wildly unpredictable battle results. They were a priority target, had no armor and were loaded with airplane fuel. A single bomb through the deck could waste them.

How were the Yamato and Musashi sunk ? Bombs or torpedoes ?

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Chief Engineer Erax:
How were the Yamato and Musashi sunk ? Bombs or torpedoes ?

The Yamato and Musashi were technically sunk by torpedoes, but they were both heavily damaged by US bombs before they capsized.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
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.

There is no defenitive evidence that Bismark's shells went through the deck armor; some of it could have hit it's side armor.

And the Hood didn't sink from shell fire. It was sunk by a powerful explosion in the Hood's ammo hold, caused by the shell from the bismark, which was an extremely lucky shot.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

i think the player should be able to make any size ship he wants. some sort of slider with a scaling cost. i'm going to post that in the se5 thread.

[Soulfisher]

Wanderer's description of warships from 1805 to 1942 is exactly what I've been thinking. As technology advances allow larger hulls, the size of a "battlecruiser" will change over time. But Fyron has a good point when he mentions ship sizes can not be obsoleted. That could get cumbersome.

Maybe, instead of increasing ship sizes, new Ship Construction levels could add new mounts for each size hull. Since mounts can not be obsoleted either, this would generate a huge pile of obsoleted mounts in the late game. Hmmm...

Preferably, whenever a new ship size is introduced, it should have its own identity from the other sizes (which is what un-modded SEIV does, to some extent). I also like SJ's idea of rapidly increasing cost with only a modderate increase in size.

Ed Kolis brings out a good point with his tentative ship size listing: an ability to build "Battleship" type ships on tech level 1. I like this idea; I'll probably introduce a "Battleship" size much earlier in my mod's tech tree than I was originally planning.

Perhaps a combination of both increasing ship sizes and increasing mounts would serve to keep all that obsolete clutter from accumulating too much. Of course, new mounts could be made to apply to only one ship size, then increase ship sizes slowly. Later, new mounts could revitalize older, smaller ships - if made only for them.

As a side note (as it doesn't really fit here), Ed Kolis and Chief Engineer Erax mention that fighters and Carriers are underpowered. I agree! Most "capital ships" (whatever that may be defined as) should have a very hard time dealing with fighters (except for anti-figher ships). Unfortunately, it would be difficult to get the AI to defend itself properly.

[Erax]

Er, I didn't exactly say that carriers were underpowered. What I said is that, if you want carriers to play the central role in SEIV, you need to create a powerful torpedo-like (or bomb-like) weapon that can be mounted on fighters.

Personally, I could play either way. I think 'Carrier SEIV' would be cool, but so is 'Battleship SEIV'.

[Soulfisher]

Sorry Chief Erax! My personal feeling is that carriers in original SEIV are good only for transporting fighters into a new system (and still have the ability to launch them). I just read too much into what you wrote.

I would think the game would be better if fighters (and therefore Carriers) were stronger than they are against capital ships. Maybe a PDG weapon mount could be devised (limited to Destroyer class vessels or smaller) to make those ships better at destroying fighters than capital ships are. The AIs would then have to updated to create an "anti-fighter destroyer" ship and to not use tonnages greater than XXX for this design.

As for my initial reason for starting this thread, most people seem desirous of some sort of relative ship-size scale.

[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.

I recently had to adjust my playing style against an AI that had all long-range, fast missile-equipped cruisers. My baseships couldn't get within range (and my dreadnoughts only with great difficulty), and I was chewed apart piece by piece.

I started building Hunter-Killer BC's (12 speed) with a single large weapon to hunt down these annoying vessels, plus fleet defense ships (equipped with lots of Point Defense). I've yet to truly try this new force mix - as my Last battle against the 20-odd capital missile-equipped cruisers went better; my 6 baseships were able to survive long enough to corner the cruisers and inflict serious losses before being wiped out.