Re: Small Ships--Why?

Galen Thies wrote:

> When addressing ths problem, I find myself thinking about ocean
navies.  Why
> can't carriers be armed to operate without escorts?  Perhaps in the
answer
> to this question, an answer an be found to the game question.

A carrier that carries enough weapons and sensors to defend itself is a
very
large and valuable ship, as weapons compete with aircraft for deck
space.	The
only way for a carrier to have enough room for everything is if it is
expanded
in size until the deck area reserved for aircraft handling is the same
as on a
current supercarrier.  A carrier operating by itself does not have an
ASW
screen, and is unlikely to detect a sub before it launches anti-ship
cruise
missiles, and on a calm day with no wind, the carrier may not notice the
sub
before the first torpedo hits; unless, it has suspended flight ops.

>
> If there is a problem with smaller ships, is there any simple solution
that
> wouldn't break the play balance?

Not much that would be fair outside of a campaign.  A possible solution
is to
adjust the cost of larger ships down, but have a probability that they
are not
able to make it for the battle (intelligence goofed, and it was
determined that
they were needed somewhere else).

>
>
> When I think about what would encourage me to take small ships, I
imagine a
> weapon that could conceivably destroy any size ship with one (lucky)
shot.
> In a universe where a weapon like this existed, I would hesitate to
stack so
> many of my eggs in one basket.

Historically, small ships are built by wet navies for a number of
reasons.  They
take a smaller amount of raw materials and less time to build, even if
they are
more expensive on a per unit mass basis, especially important during
wartime.
They can patrol a larger area than the equivalent monetary value of
battleships.  Tonne per tonne, they can keep a larger number of
shipyards from
closing due to lack of work (Which is why the US Navy builds carriers as
slowly
as it can afford to).  If you can only send one ship to scout something
unusual,
small ships are easier to risk losing.

The simplest way to encourage the construction of small ships in a
campaign is
to enforce the economic reality that shipyard workers are highly
skilled, and
will find other work that pays very well if they are not building ships.
Shipyard capacity is expensive in both time and money to build up, and
is easily