Re: [GZG] Battlecruisers

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http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn 12/24/06, Oerjan
Ariander <oerjan.ariander@rixmail.se> wrote:
>
> 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".

When they were built, they were the largest ships in the kriegsmarine. 
They
only appear to be between cruisers and battleships after the
construction of
Bismark and Tirpitz.

> >> >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.

Replace the BC's 12" guns with even a larger number of 9.2" and things
look
really bad for the british, as they no longer really outgun the S & G in
a
serious manner and they suffer from having only the same armor the S &
G.
In that fight, the S & G may even have a small range advantage as Spee's
squadron had won the Kaiser's gunnery prize more than once. 
Historically,
the British BC's were able to stay in the sweet spot were the german
21cm
guns could neither penetrate the belt, nor plunge through the deck. 
Firing
12" guns, the British need not care that the S & G had similar
protection.
Spee's squadron may still have been sunk, but the british losses would
have
disproved the concept of BC's, if they only had comparable armament to
the
CA's.  Especially if they fought under the same historical conditions
that
forced them to shutdown and restart their gunfire computers, this time
under
the flail of the german guns, at ranges that allowed the shells to punch
right through the belt.

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.

The protection of the ships was actually quite similar; although the
belt of
the BC's was thicker on average, the german CA's had the same max
thickness
of belt, the same deck armor, and same protection for the main guns. 
They
won because of their longer ranged armament, which could engage the CA's
outside of effective return fire.

A ship with two class-4's against a ship with two class-3, that can also
keep the range at 24+ will get some return fire, but will do at least
twice
as much damage, each turn.

>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.

Going by lists of british light cruisers of WWI,  It was 6-8 years
before
new light cruisers exceeded the speed of the first battlecruisers. 
Except
for the 'wierd sisters' (light cruisers with battleship main guns), no
british light cruiser before WWII had the turn of speed designed into
the
Repulse and Renown (laid down in 1915-16).  So, for the Royal Navy, no
equally modern light cruiser had a snowball's chance in hell of
outrunning a
battle cruiser.  The german light cruisers were equally slow footed. 
Long
ships have a higher hullspeed than shorter ships, so at 32 knots, the
HMS
Hood was likely one of the fastest, as well as largest warship afloat,
if
only for a short time.

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.

The problem with my vision of Fisher-style BC's in FT is that there are
no
battleships, let alone dreadnoughts in FT.  There are CA's, large
cruisers
labelled BC's, larger cruisers labelled BB's, even larger cruisers
labelled
BDN's, and the largest cruisers are labelled SDN's.  The mass penalty
for
the larger beam classes pretty much prevent the existence of fisher
style
DN's; although Phalon-style multi layered hulls, thrust 6 and a bunch of
class-4's might cut it.   The resulting ship would be very large, and
very
expensive.