Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Richard Bell wrote:

> > >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.

Sure they did; just like the USN called their pocket battleship-equivalents 
"large cruisers" rather than "battlecruisers". What they were called by 
their builders doesn't change the fact that the WW2 Scharnhorst and 
Gneisenau were quite similar to the USN Alaskas in both displacement and 
performance, contrary to your above claim that "only the USN built ships 
like that".

> > >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.

You're thinking of the 1st Edition (there have been at least another four 
editions since then), but you've mixed BBs up with CVs. 1st edition BBs 
only had *80* hull spaces, so going from BC to BB only lost you 7 hull 
spaces. (CVs had 85 hull spaces but used BC engines; OTOH they suffered 
rather severe cost penalties when carrying offensive weapons.)

'Course, 1st edition *superdreadnoughts* had 120 hull spaces - and since 
most real-world BCs were built after the Dreadnought, it is really the 
BC-vs-DN/SDN comparison which is interesting for your purposes. StarFire's 
"BB" category correlates roughly to real-world wet-navy predreadnoughts.

In the 2nd and subsequent editions OTOH going from BB to BC lost you *17* 
hull spaces, and since most BB designs only use 20-25 hull spaces for 
shields and armour trying to fit a BB armament on a BC left you with 3-8 
hull spaces for passive defences... which compares rather closely to an 
average DD using 4-6 hull spaces for passive defences, and is decidedly 
less than a typical CA's 10-15 spaces of passive defences.

StarFire BCs have generally buggered CAs, since in the 1st through 3rd 
editions the BC and CA engine requirements were identical but the BCs were 
33% larger - giving exactly the same effect as if Full Thrust BCs only had 
to pay 3.75% of their TMF for each thrust point while all other ships had 
to pay the full 5% per thrust point. There was a great outcry when we 
changed this in SM#2 (or possibly 3rd Revised Edition, can't remember which 
ATM).

> > >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.

You only need class-4s if you want to be *completely invulnerable* to the 
cruisers. You don't need them to *defeat* the cruisers. If you're prepared 
to take some return fire (and possibly even some damage) in the process, it 
is enough to merely outgun the cruisers at any range they can shoot back at 
you from while being at least as capable to absorb damage as they are 
(which FWIW is how the RN beat Spee's squadron at the Falklands).

> 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

No, it wouldn't change anything in that battle - because in the historical 
battle, the Germans started scoring hits on the British BCs before taking 
serious damage themselves. Their problem was not to *score* hits, but that 
their guns were too small to penetrate the armour of the British ships when 
they *did* hit. Invincible was hit 22 times during the battle, over half of 
those by 8" shells, yet only 1 crew member was injured and no-one aboard 
her was killed.

Which is exactly what I'm talking about above. The British did NOT win at 
the Falklands by pounding the Germans to submission from outside the range 
of the German guns the way you want your class-4-armed FT BC to handle 
enemy cruisers. They won because their heavier armament and stronger 
protection allowed them to shrug off the hits the Germans could and did 
inflict, whereas the German ships couldn't shrug off hits from the British 
guns. In FT terms both sides had "class-3" batteries but the British ships 
had more of them (giving them heavier firepower at the same range), in 
addition to having stronger screens and/or more armour and hull boxes than 
the German ships.

> To control the range, you have to be faster.

Or have an energy advantage, gained eg. by wrong-footing the enemy (or 
having him wrong-foot himself like Spee did). Very few if any historical 
BCs were faster than smaller cruisers of the same age and at the same level 
of maintenance. (Being faster than *older* ships was no big challenge due 
to the rapid technological advances of the era.) At the Falklands the 
German cruisers were in need of boiler refits and therefore couldn't manage 
their official maximum speed; the BCs OTOH were in good repair and could 
reach their official maximum speeds.

The ship you are trying to design is not a repeat of the historical 
Fischer-style BCs that were actually built, but a dream image of an 
idealised Fischer-style BC that never was built in the real world. Of 
course such a Full Thrust ship will be outrageously expensive; chasing 
dreams almost always is.

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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