Re: [semi-OT] Aircraft Vs Dreadnoughts

Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

I would like to apologise for writing a beginning and end, but not a
middle.

> "Robertson, Brendan" wrote:
>
> > Interesting, I wonder if the USN is trying to get the funding for
this.
> > As a layman, I would guess they could easily reduce crew
requirements by
> > half as well as designing the defences for the greatest protection
in modern
> > air combat.
> >
> > Neath Southern Skies -http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/
> > [MKW2] Admiral Peter Rollins - Task Force Zulu-Beta
> > [Firestorm] Battletech PBeM GM
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Alan and Carmel Brain [SMTP:aebrain@dynamite.com.au]
> > > Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 2:02 PM
> > >
> > > Personally, I'd like to see the manufacture of new BBs. It'd only
cost
> > > as much as 5 Nimitz's to get the infrastructure in place,  then
less
> > > than a Nimitz each.
> > >
> > > For 4 BBs this would still be cheaper after 5 years than keeping
the
> > > current ones in service. The huge crew size required, the training
in
> > > 1930s
> > > and 1940s technology needed, the upkeep of "we haven't made those
parts
> > > for over 50 years" equipment etc are all very very costly items.
> > >
> > > All of the above are my own back-of-the-envelope estimates, based
on
> > > various
> > > reports to the US Congress and articles in the USNI Proceedings.
So take
> > > em with a grain of salt. It might be 4 Nimitz's, or 6. It might be
3
> > > years,
> > > or 10.
> > > The "5 Nimitz" figure assumes construction techniques borrowed
from the
> > > Nimitz class BTW, more of a monocoque construction than the
5-keel-
> > > stringers in the Iowas.
>
> The insurmountable problem of trying to get Congress to give the Navy
enough
> money to build a new class of battleships is that the Navy must
explain what
> these ships will do and why nothing currently available will
accomplish the
> task.  There is nothing for a modern, big gunned battleship to do and
no reason
> to have the capabilities to even sink one, let alone build it.

For a Nimitz sized vessel, the minimum crewing requirement is about 50
plus the
number of people needed to run a 250 megawatt powerplant ( I would bet
on bot less
than a thousand) and another unspecified number of people to operate and
maintain
the weapons.  The vessel would require as much steel as nearly 10 Aegis
cruisers,
and there is very little that the battleship could do that the ten
cruisers could
not do better.	The heavy armor of an Iowa is proof against a lot of
weapons, but
the last generation of soviet anti-ship missiles will do a significant
amount of
damage, even if it does not sink.  A tomohawk land attack missile is
more expensive
than a 16" shell + propellant, but 200 T-LAM's are cheaper than the
infrastructure
to deliver 200 16" shells to a target, and the missiles are more
accurate and have a
longer range.

FT does not have the problem of finding a use for a battleship, it has
the opposite
problem that battleships are very useful, but impossible to build (i.e.
there are no
"true" battleships in FT).

>
>
> A working definition for a cruiser is a vessel capable of independent
operations
> (powerful enough to destroy small vessels and durable enough to flee
in the face
> of overwhelming numbers).  There is no analogy to ASW in Full Thrust,
and no
> ship is impervious to the smaller weapons, so FT only has roles for
fighters
> (which need to gang up to destroy anything), scouts, torpedo boats,
torpedo boat
> destroyers, anti-fighter escorts, cruisers and carriers.  BC's, BB's,
BDN's, and
> SDN's all fall into the category of "super cruisers".  They are all
larger than
> cruisers, and they have more and/or larger guns, but tonne for tonne
they are no
> more capable than cruisers.
>
> A "true" battleship has an absolute immunity to the guns carried
destroyers or
> lesser vessels, is only vulnerable to a cruisers weapons at very short
ranges,
> and there exists (for wet navy BB's that had to float) a range band
where the
> heavy guns of an opposing BB can neither pierce the armored belt nor
the armored
> deck.  An off-the-cuff way for FT'ers to appreciate BB's is if you
allow ships
> to up to one row of armor for every 50 pts of mass (at the same armor
cost,
> rounding fractions DOWN), K-guns have the same cost as beams, the
range bands
> for K-guns are 4+2xclass, you introduce a penalty for firing big guns
at little
> targets, and p-torps and fighters ignore all but the last row of
armor.	This
> should give a good feel for WWII (WWI disallows fighters).

I should also complete the analogy, K-guns can have multiple arcs, like
beam
batteries.  All vessels have a class that is equal to the rows of armor
that it is
eligible to posess.  If the class of gun is larger than the class of the
target, the
difference is subtracted from the die roll to determine a hit.	The
reverse is not