Cruiser appreciation edition.
Talk about botes, bote based wargaming and RPGs, and maybe even a certain bote based vidya that tickles our autism in just the right way.
Games, Ospreys and References (Courtesy of /hwg/)
mediafire.com
Models and Manufacturers
pastebin.com
Rule the Waves
mega.nz
Previous:
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Never really understood why some people are hellbent on insisting that large cruiser=battlecruiser.
The Alaska was a 30k ton boat with nine 12'' guns and a 30+ knot top speed. I think it's understandable that people might want to call it a battlecruiser.
the main difference IIRC is that the Alaska-class was inherently a cruiser design, scaled up. whereas most true battlecruisers are inherently *battleship* designs, scaled down.
Well, the Navy's own thinking wasn't too clear on whether the ships would be a CC or CB for most of the design process and even after two were launched. Officially the Navy called them CBs while the Navy's own PR and service mags called them CCs.
Friedman's book says the design was initially meant to counter potentially any larger post-treaty cruisers. The KM's Deutschland-class then became the concern. Later it was the KM's Scharnhorst-class. After that is was the IJN's mythical Chichibu-class and finally the IJN's "super cruiser" B65 design. Friedman also points out the class' overall armor percentages were close to the Lexington-CB percentages.
So, at various stages the design was meant to be a big cruiser killer, then a pocket-battleship killer, then a small battleship-battlecruiser killer, then a battlecruiser killer, and finally a super cruiser killer, so what in hell could or should they have been called?
I'll go with CB because the final design was pretty much a scaled up the Baltimore design and they had much poorer underwater protection than a capital ship, but I can understand why some still prefer CC.
What else do you expect from people who labeled Deutschland(s) (with half the displacement, 26 kts and 2x3 11" guns) as 'pocket battleships' ...
Compare the Alaska to the Scharnhorst, an admittedly rather anemic battleship. The Alaska was a bit smaller (34 kilotons to Scharnhorst's 38), but it was better armed (nine 12'' guns to Scharnhorst's nine 11'' guns) and little faster (33 knots vs 31) at the price of having absolutely garbage protection by comparison. That sounds a lot like a battlecruiser.
>What else do you expect from people who labeled Deutschland(s) (with half the displacement, 26 kts and 2x3 11" guns) as 'pocket battleships' ...
That was a label invented by the press. ONI always referred to them as CAs as did the Germans after 1939 or 40.
The CA designation fits neatly with the Alaska's initial design role as "cruiser killers".
As noted, the Alaska-class were scaled up cruisers while the Scharnhorsts and "proper" battlecruisers were scaled down battleships.
>The CA designation fits neatly with the Alaska's initial design role as "cruiser killers"
Wasn't that the original job spec of the battlecruiser though?
>Wasn't that the original job spec of the battlecruiser though?
Beats the fuck out of me. Fisher had his own ideas, the RN had their own ideas, and everyone else had their own ideas.
Every ship in the world doesn't fit nicely into some neatly labeled box. Real life is messy and not some sperglord's org chart.
>Real life is messy and not some sperglord's org chart. => pic totally related.
OTOH, Fisher did say something about battlecruiser being (to the CA) what BB was to B's ...
So, IMHO, each and every big cruiser = a battlecruiser in my book.
>OTOH, Fisher did say something about battlecruiser being (to the CA) what BB was to B's ...
That was Fisher's take. Other people and other navies had different ideas. Fisher's envisioned role for them occurred once while the other roles occurred more often.
>So, IMHO, each and every big cruiser = a battlecruiser in my book.
I can buy that. I'm ambivalent. The Alaska-class could be CB or CC because there are good arguments for both. If forced to choose I'd say CB but I can understand someone saying CC too. In the end, we're only confusing the label for the thing.
One of these days, they'll get painted and taken out for an actual cruiser hunting expedition.
>That was Fisher's take. Other people and other navies had different ideas. Fisher's envisioned role for them occurred once while the other roles occurred more often.
What do you mean?
CA's were (basically - as far as I can figure) built as big 'improved' & 'unstoppable' cruisers who will do the cruising job (i.e. patrol, recon & raiding) un-impeded by other cruisers.
A veritable battleships among cruisers (so to speak).
IMHO, Battlecruisers, as their heirs, did the same job - and more than once: Battles at Falklands and Dogger Bank, various raids and shore bombardments ...
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Imagine the quiet despair of those designation guys, trying to give out life-or-death tutorial hints whenever they hand over unfamiliar designs to the meatheads.
>ok, this is the most I can do for them- start calling them CLAAs- that way, people will know to keep them out of ship-to-ship actions. They've got the tonnage, there are festooned with guns, we give them some HE and AP, but they just aren't designed function as cruisers in a battle squadron. They can do *something*, but they can't do *that*.
>oh damn it callaghan
Probably for the best Alaska never got into a proper scrum, they've have line-of-battle'd it, anchoring lighter units doing more manuevery stuff, and then might have gone down to a single torp an actual capital unit left over from WWI wouldn't even have noticed.
That said, for the Battle of the Falklands alone (and dealing with Spee *quickly* once it was clear The Squadron could beat any RN cruiser force on the ocean), the BCs were worth every pound they put into them.
Once German ACs waltzing around the world ocean like they owned the place weren't a thing though, they kind of had to broaden their horizons. That went less well.
>fuck, even just as "Scouting unit for the Battleline" Goodenough's lights were better
>and as forward fighters and beaters, Evan-Thomas's superdreads were better
>Can't beat specialists in their specialities, and those BCs were specialist cruiser-killers, not generalist battleline support
How was Alaska's fuel use? The bit of recent lore I've taken to heart is how much of a thing that is- what kept BB's out of the Guadacanal campaign is that there just wasn't the fuel for them to be there doing BB things. So cruisers had to a lot of the work that technically speaking there were the battleship hulls for.
If Alaska could be attached to a task force without having to leave out another capital ship because it's burning its gas, that's a worthwhile thing
>Waddaya mean, we can't use all these guns for surface action? Just watch us!
Alaska had nearly the same horsepower engine plants as the North Carolina class battleship.
So, it's fuel use (and, thence, usage) would be the same.
Look, for all intents and purposes, Alaska was basically a battleship-level ... ship ... on par (tonnage-, speed-, armor- and weapons-wise) with the Scharnhorsts, Dunkerques and Renowns, all of which are rated as either Battleships or Battlecruisers.
Now, either they're 'Great Cruisers', too - or Alaska is a Battlecruiser.
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phat
>1% combat hit rates
Damn, I had forgotten how hard it was to hit anything during first couple years.
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Internal design-wise, however, the Alaska was laid out much more like a cruiser. Those other ships had more in common with battleships in their layouts. That, to my knowledge, is why the Alaska class isn't considered a battlecruiser despite being on par with those designs in most respects, for practical purposes.
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>How was Alaska's fuel use?
According to Friedman, while they had 90% or more of the Essex-class' propulsion plant, their hull design gave them a lower endurance/range. So much so that the Cleveland-class was selected for carrier conversion instead of them.
>>The bit of recent lore I've taken to heart is how much of a thing that is- what kept BB's out of the Guadacanal campaign is that there just wasn't the fuel for them to be there doing BB things.
That was more of an IJN issue. Fuel and fueling concerns rarely effected USN ops, Fletcher not withstanding. What kept USN BBs out of the Slot was 1) restricted waters and 2) the Long Lance.
>or all intents and purposes, Alaska was basically a battleship-level ... ship ... on par
Not in the slightest. All the classes you noted had better armor protection especially underwater protection. The Alaska-class were an "inflated" version of the Baltimore-class and not a "shrunken" version of the Standards, SoDaks, or Iowas.
Yeah, the early game is pretty mind-numbingly dull. Every fleet battle pretty much goes the same. You at best get a glimpse of the other guy before he turns and runs for the nearest port. What shots you can actually fire at him never hit, and either he reaches port and despawns or night falls and you lose track of him.
Sometimes you'll hit once or twice, but nothing comes of it because it was your secondary or tertiary battery landing the hit.
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Ah, early game. Its why i invest so heavily in AP and fire control. Just like everybody else.
At least it starts to get better after 1904-1905.
It gets really good... and then it immediately ends.
Just like the age of battleships in real life.
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Another thread, another bizarre french monstrosity.
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> Pierre! Can't you make a normal boat just once?!
> Non.
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Tbh the sweet spot in RtW is between mid-00s and mid-10s.
>fire control is decent enough to hit at least every now and then
>most varied ship designs
Torpedo-ram predreads bowling for pastas was a hoot.
Agree completely. Treaties make the game fun later, IMO, only because of weight limits.
You are totally right that after that it can get fairly lethal.
I particularly like having to guess the changeover when your now-invincible goddesses of destruction have to start running away from destroyers. Guess wrong, have yourself a Black Day.
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Treaty+1905-1915 can produce some pretty interesting designs.
>18k ton treaty limited (got to cheat by extra 10% thanks to the government type)
>max caliber 12 inches
>no superfiring turrets
>triple turrets were still unreliable
Most likely will end up scrapping her pretty soon after building up a decent arsenal +14 incher super-dreads.
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Should I be worried that after constant barrage of French boars Japanese turret cancer doesn't look that bad anymore?
I do find myself laughing quite hard if im playing as a smaller nation and a good treaty gets thrown in, i rarely lose more than a ship or two in production while the big guys lose 6+.
The beginning of hhe next war is always "Eat treaty cruisers, fool! (also tje prewar Bs that i needed for fleet in being)"
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Popping in with a simple question Veeky Forums, what is the best light naval wargame? I'm talking board game tier light- Memoir '44, Axis and n or Battlelore level of rules. Preferably still has some semblance of actual naval simulationism.
Victory at Sea should be both pretty light on rules and still be playable. Plus it should be in the mediafire file linked in the OP.
Avalon Hill's Midway/Coral Sea
Axis&Allies Naval is pretty good if you want simple.
I personally go a bit heavier and use Naval War.
It's still pretty straightforward.
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Some of my fleet.
1/700th, or larger?
1/700. My preferred scale.
>whereas most true battlecruisers are inherently *battleship* designs, scaled down
Depends on what you mean by scaled down.
Armor wise, sure. But actual physical dimensions? Not really. Speed and guns were all equal to battleships, or higher with the former.
Alaska was really a powerful heavy cruiser of the time compared to what is considered a battlecruiser of that time, which was a battleship with less armor. Alaska was shorter and had far smaller guns.
>Alaska was shorter and had far smaller guns.
Yep. Though to be totally fair, Alaska's 12'' guns had a penetrating punch equaling or in some cases surpassing those of WWI-era 14'' guns.
>secretary of navy has read strange books again and has decided that japan needs at least 10 new cruisers
>design and lay down a class of budget CLs
>basically their only good point is that they're fast enough to work with my battlecruisers and have 2 topredo tubes on each side
>fully expect them to be sunk pretty quickly by enemy surface vessels
>10 years and 2 wars against russia later
>even though they ended up taking part in most of the major battles of the wars, only 1 of them was sunk by enemy surface ships, another one went down thanks to a russian submarine and 2 more were mined
Never ended up getting that prestige bonus from building requested amount of cruisers though, Ivan declared war before that had a chance to happen.
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Greece's pre-WW1 battleship escapade never stops being amusing.
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Don't forget that whole not actually faster than its concurrent battleship-class thing.
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Such a sexy bote.
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That is a pretty big gun for a sub.
Sub? Nah, that's just a light cruiser with reaaaaaallly low freeboard, and some flooding problems. Nothing that isn't manageable.
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Pretty sure that those submarines have higher freeboard than that monitor has.
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Oh France, never change.
That is a brit bote, m8.
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I wonder what it tells about me that Japan is my favorite nation to play as in RtW.
Ah, only used to surcoufs looking that potato. In that case...
Oh Britain, please change!
Nothing wrong with sub-cruisers.
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