@Baron:
@Uncrustable:
Adding units dilutes the game
And why add escort carriers before torpedo boats?
Or super battleships, battlecruisers, light cruisers, etc
The carrier in the game now does not represent a specific carrier, but rather a ‘group’ or ‘task force’ focused around aircraft carriers. I imagine the groups would include multiple different types of carriers both large and small
On the other part,
creating battlecruiser and lightcruiser will require something special to create an incentive toward essentially combat ship, which we already have in 2 versions: Cruiser and Battleship.
How will those 2 new units (which can bombard?, have AA guns?, or have ASW, have 3 spaces move?) will add something?
The same question will rise, as shown by many treads complaining about few buying of cruiser.
Many will say: why buying this or that, if it doesn’t improve or maximize the offensive or defensive punch?
I found this about historical light cruiser CL and heavy cruiser CA:
Perhaps the ultimate example of this interchangeability of light and heavy cruiser design was the Japanese Mogami class, which were commissioned as light cruisers armed with 15-6.1" guns in five triple turrets in order to conform to the Washington Naval Treaty. When war became imminent, they were rearmed as heavy cruisers simply by exchanging the triple 6" turrets for twin 8" turrets, which by design shared the same size turret rings. The Mogami’s were, in fact, among the most powerful and capable of all WW II heavy cruisers and graphically demonstrated that there was no longer any practical difference, in terms of hull size or displacement, between light and heavy cruisers.
http://www.chuckhawks.com/best_light_cruisers.htm
About Battlecruiser, specially the H.M.S. Hoods:
The Royal Navy had three battlecruisers at the beginning of the Second World War: Renown, Repulse, and Hood. All three were begun during the First World War, and represent the second generation of battlecruisers.
Renown and Repulse were sisters, and carried 6-15in guns and a 9in belt on about 32,000t standard displacement. Both were modestly refit in the 1920’s. Renown was given a major reconstruction which, when completed in 1939, brought her up to contemporary British standards. Due to the outbreak of the war, Repulse did not receive this second reconstruction.
The German Admiralty was particularly nervous about the British battlecruisers, as they were the only British ships which were as fast as the two third generation fast battleships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and also out gunned them. Repulse, along with the battleship Prince of Wales, was sunk off Malaysia in December, 1941 by Japanese naval aircraft. Renown survived a very busy war to be sold to the ship breakers in 1948.
The third ship, Hood, was the largest battlecruiser of all time, and probably the most famous. For almost all of her life she was the largest warship in the world. She was known everywhere as “the mighty Hood”. She was originally designed as a response to the WW I German Mackensen class. When it became clear that these would never be completed, the three other members of the Hood class were canceled, but the Hood herself was far enough along to be worth completing. She was intended to be a 32 knot battlecruiser version of the very successful Queen Elizabeth class battleships. She was commissioned in 1920, and represented a new standard of battlecruiser protection. Many authorities consider her to be the first of the new type later to be called “fast battleships”. Certainly, her 12in inclined belt offered good protection by the standards of the time, but a lot of her total tonnage of armor (which amounted to 33.6% of her hull weight) was wasted in inconsequential places. In fairness, it should be pointed out that the Hood was armored to almost identical standards as the vaunted Queen Elizabeth class battleships.
She got a modest refit in 1929-30, but was never modernized. She was due for a major rebuild in 1939 (similar to Renown), but this was never accomplished due to the outbreak of war. After the beginning of the war, her original 5.5in secondary guns were removed, and more AA guns added.
Her specifications in 1941 follow (From Jane’s Fighting Ships of World War II and Encyclopedia of the World’s Warships, by Hugh Lion):
Displacement: 42,100t standard; 46,200t full load
Dimensions:810ft pp, 860ft 7in oa x 105ft 2.5in x 31.5ft max.
Machinery:4-shaft Brown-Curtis geared turbines, 24 Yarrow small tube
boilers, 144,000shp = 28.8kts Oil 4,000t max.
Armor:Belt 12in-5in; deck 3in-1in; turrets 15in faces, 12in-11in sides;
barbettes 12in; 12in-9in CT
Armament: 8-15in/42 (4x2), 14-4in AA (7x2), 24-40mm AA (3x8), 8-.50 MG,
4-21in TT (2x2)
Complement:1,341
Range:5,170nm at 18kts