Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

["Richard Bell" <rlbell.nsuid@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/23/06, Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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...

I was under the possibly mistaken impression that the germans called
them battleships.
> >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...

I have obviously not played Starfire in a long, long time.  When I
played, a BC was limited to 70 spaces and the BB only had 85.  After
maxing out both for speed, the BB was speed 5 with 70 spaces for
everything else, and the BC was speed 6 with 58 spaces for everything
else.  Except for the more sparsely defended BB's, the BC could have
the same armament, yet more shields and armor than a CA.
> >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),
>
> 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).

The BC needs class-4's, not because the capital ships use them, but
because the cruisers that it hunts have class-3's.  Only having
class-3's would force the BC to trade fire with the cruisers.
Class-4's give the BC a measure of impunity.  The WWI Battle of the
Falklands would have been very different if the CA's Scharnhorst and
Gniesnau were able to reply from the get go (Really good gunnery
against ships with ballistic computers set to the wrong hemisphere,
for the first few minutes).  It is not enough to be as fast as the
cruisers.  To control the range, you have to be faster.  With more
thrust, you not only guarantee the interception, but can tailer the
intercept to suit you.  Ideally, you would like to intercept your
target at nearly the same vector to them, to maximise the time they
spend under the destructive sleet of your beams.  That requires either
a cooperative enemy, or a larger thrust envelope.

If my BC's seem out of line for the other capital ships in
Tuffleyverse, it is only because the capital ships all have a very
pre-dreadnought flavor.  That is not really a problem, it would be a
very different game, if there was a way for large ships to slough off
hits from smaller ships.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l