Armoured Carriers: Is it useful?

[Razgriz13]

Deck armor was a thing, I got it, but is it of any use? In historical terms they were meant to take a beating against land based aircraft, but do that work in hoi 4?

 

[Cavalry]

No usefull because you should have at least one BB to shield the gunfire. But it can be useful to have an extra AA instead of extra desk, depend on whom you fight. The enemy planes always prioritize CV. The BB hulled CV is also very good with extra HP and quite fast.

 

[coffeelingfine]

My gut tells me more deck space for planes is more important than armor, but I dunno. I haven't tested it or anything.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

If you play it with the Dockyard Modification then yes.

 

[GSP Jr]

Depends on who you ask and when you ask them.
Ask Admiral Nagumo before Midway and he would probably say he wanted more planes.
Ask him after, you may get a different answer.
Like everything in-game, there is not a simple yes/no answer that is valid for all the different situations.

 

[King Of Heroes]

Deck armor doesn't give any real protection against CAS bombs and even if it did nobody who can afford naval bombers uses those anyway.

Tactical bombers maybe, but the first point still applies.

It's one of the things neglected in MtG, Torpedo protection, Deck protection and Belt protection were all different deals and one of the places were several sacrifices and compromises could be made ingame depending on what you're against.

 

[KDEstroy]

Depends on who you ask and when you ask them.
Ask Admiral Nagumo before Midway and he would probably say he wanted more planes.
Ask him after, you may get a different answer.
Like everything in-game, there is not a simple yes/no answer that is valid for all the different situations.

Except unlike in real life, deck armor has absolutely zero effect for reducing damage from bombers. Naval bombers completely ignore armor. It does add around 25 HP, but a CV has 300 HP in total, and it would increase the production costs by more than 10%. This means if you truly want more HP for your CV, it's more efficient to build another CV rather than add armor. One deck armor module only adds 5 armor, so you would need 2 armor modules just to save it from getting pierced by CL. No practical amount of armor will save it from CA guns. And if capital ships are shooting at your CV, retreating is far better than getting sunk.

So really, there is only one extremely rare situation where deck armor would be better than deck space. When the enemy has very few capital ships, but they have a ton of 1936 CLs, and you don't have any ships left on your side except CVs, then it might be better to have 2 armor modules instead of deck space. But if you ever find yourself in that situation your CVs are dead no matter what, the armor would simply make the difference between dying in 6 hours or dying in 18 hours.

 

[Secret Master]

The fact that deck armor removes space for planes is kind of the death knell for using it.

If I had my druthers, I'd rework it in a way that it does something else in addition to adding HP and armor, and maybe give it its own slot. A passive reduction in damage from air attacks, perhaps?

 

[wingren013]

Deck Armor in reality was of extremely limited value. It's an idea from an era where bombs were much more unreliable in terms of penetration and the admiralty of many countries would have never authorized a ship that large without some sort of armor and guns anyways. Even in that era they were probably questionable.

The development of dive bombers pretty much killed what little utility deck armor theoretically had. Everyone who kept using it did so because of institutional inertia.

TLDR deck armor was a "good idea" from a time where nobody was quite sure how to carrier and naval aviation was still developing

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

In-game, deck armor is terrible since it takes away from hangar space but only works against surface fire (!?). It adds HP, but the effect is negligible in reality.

In reality, there were 3 different ways of armoring a carrier: deck armor (which didn't detract at all from carrying capacity, other than the opportunity cost due to the ship being more expensive), reinforced hangars (which significantly-increased a ship's tactical survivability, aka HP, but also reduced the size of hangars on account of the armor around them), and belt armor (which is what deck armor actually ends up materializing as). Belt armor was actually on most carriers, with the battlecruiser conversions coming out with 4-to-6 inches of belt armor (the British conversions were made from stupidly-light BCs compared to the later US and Japanese ones).

Realistic deck armor shouldn't be some stacking side-armor module; that should be a case of straight-up belt armor akin to cruisers (in fact, carriers should share cruiser armor options, plus BB/BC armor for carrier conversions). The current deck armor module should really be replaced by a reinforced hangar module with reduced deck space but bonus HP, while deck armor should be one of two options for the main hangar (since carriers always need at least a primary hangar, let that one determine armored or unarmored). Deck armor should add reliability and HP, but only a little armor (deck armor is only effective against plunging fire, and not close-ranged gunfire). Ideally deck armor would also have resistance to CAS damage (which should have extra effectiveness against unarmored carriers).

The historic answer to the question of which was best ended up being deck armor but open hangars (as in, not reinforced) and limited belt armor (no one wanted none just in case a destroyer or cruiser got close, but it only really ended up at cruiser-grades in most circumstances other than the Shinano conversion with a full-on Yamato armor belt). The British were moving away from reinforced hangars towards open hangars by 1945, while the US actually abandoned the unarmored deck for the Midway-class, showing that both the world's premier navies had basically the same idea there. Deck armor was also particularly-valuable against kamikazes, as one of the more comical reports of the HMS Indefatigable showed (hence the quote "When a kamikaze hits a US carrier its 6 months in repair at Pearl Harbor; when a kamikaze hits a Limey carrier its just a case of 'sweepers, man your brooms'").

 

[egslim]

Deck Armor in reality was of extremely limited value. It's an idea from an era where bombs were much more unreliable in terms of penetration and the admiralty of many countries would have never authorized a ship that large without some sort of armor and guns anyways. Even in that era they were probably questionable.

Deck armor was required in theaters where the main threat consisted of large numbers of land-based aircraft.
Because their airfields could not be 'sunk' in a first strike, and because they would always outnumber the carrier's own aircraft, some would inevitably penetrate the defenses - and therefore the carrier had to be protected against bomb hits.

In theaters where the main threat consists of other carriers and aircraft based on small islands it's better to maximize aircraft capacity, because under these conditions it's feasible to overwhelm your opponent.

In practice deck armor proved effective in the Mediterranean, where HMS Illustrious survived a pounding that would have sunk any carrier without deck armor. It also proved effective against Kamikazes - both situations where land-based attackers were able to penetrate the defenses through sheer numbers.
Wartime experience led to the adoption of deck armor for the Midway-class, though without the 'armored box' from the Illustrious-class, which had restricted hangar ceiling height - necessary to operate more modern, larger aircraft.

The Illustrious-class' deck armor was designed to withstand 1,000 pound bombs, which incidentally were the heaviest bombs carried by the Douglass SBD Dauntless dive bomber - the main American dive bomber during the war. So the deck armor remained effective throughout the war, only in the last years of the war single-engine aircraft began to appear which carried 2,000 pound bombs. Multi-engine aircraft could carry heavier loads, but they were typically easier to dodge.

In-game the most effective protection for carriers is sufficient numbers of screens and capitals, to prevent any hits on the carriers. Then it makes most sense to design the carriers as glass canons, with maximum striking power and minimal protection.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

In the Mod the reduces of Airplanes, etc. aren´t untuched. But the forgotten Relaiability for Ships are getting in and some other things. Therfore I said only with Dockyard Mod.

 

[Razgriz13]

In the Mod the reduces of Airplanes, etc. aren´t untuched. But the forgotten Relaiability for Ships are getting in and some other things. Therfore I said only with Dockyard Mod.

What mod is that?