Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Bell wrote:

> I recently read the "Tough Guide to the Universe" and got a small bee
> up my nose about how the author used the term "battlecruiser".
> Although, what he really got right was that any ship labelled
> "battlecruiser" gets its coolness factor upped several notches, so
> long as it is fast and has big guns.
>
> It got me thinking about how battlecruisers are handled in games.
> They are usually ships between a heavy cruiser and a battleship.  Only
> one navy (the USN) ever built ships like that, and they were called
> "Large Cruisers" (the Alaska class).

At least one other navy built ships like that. Compare the stats for the 
Alaskas with those of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau - you might get 
surprised by the similarities...

FWIW, at the time the S&G were built the Royal Navy classified them as 
"battlecruisers" since that was the RN's catch-all term for any fast 
capital ship regardless of armour or armament :-/

> All ships that were actually called battlecruisers were as large as, if 
> not larger, than
> battleships. The HMS Hood, a battlecruiser, was the largest warship
> in the world, until the Bismark was completed.  Battlecruisers were
> basically dreadnoughts that exchanged weight of armor for weight of
> machinery to get an extra turn of speed.  The only game that ever got
> this right was Starfire, as a BC was faster than a BB and if it
> accepted less protection, it could mount the same armament.

StarFire doesn't get this right either, since it restricts BCs to a mere 
80% the size of BBs (and a mere 62% the size of "SDNs"). This is of course 
quite contrary to the Hood example. Sure, you can build a StarFire BC with 
the same armament as a typical BB, but if you do you'll get a ship with the 
defences of an average destroyer...

> For an FT ship to be the equivalent of a true BC, it would need to
> combine a thrust of eight with enough class-4 beams to threaten a CA
> at the 24+ rangeband (preferably 36-48),

Sounds like you're talking about a Vector-optimized background here. For 
the (Cinematic) GZGverse, both the thrust-8 and the class-4s are IMO rather 
over the top - it'd make your BC faster than any other GZGverse ship except 
the ESU Lenov-class scout, and allow it to outrange any other ship except 
the ESU Komarov-class SDN...

With most GZGverse capital ships restricted to thrust ratings of 2-4, and 
fast cruisers and destroyers generally having thrust 6, a "Fischer-style" 
GZGverse BC would only need to *match* the fastest smaller cruisers - ie., 
thrust 6.

Similarly with armament: when most GZGverse capital ships relying on 
class-*3* batteries for their main armament (except for the Komarov, that 
is), and cruisers having at most 2 class-3s, giving your "Fischer-style" BC 
a main armament of 3-4 class-3 batteries would allow it to comfortably 
outgun any heavy cruiser it encounters while rivalling most slower 
battleships and dreadnoughts in firepower (though not in survivability, of 
course).

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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