No light carriers

[bcoop1701]

Actually, I don't recall Japan constructing any light carriers during the war, only converting existing ships. I'm not really positive, but I think Japan had the idea that purpose-built carriers below a certain size is not worthwhile, so the emergency programs aimed for "medium" carriers and no light carriers were ever laid down.

You could be right. Shinano for example was converted mid-construction from a battleship to carrier post-Midway and isn't really a full fleet carrier in regards to capability for 1944 but she doesn't fit the description of a light carrier either (nothing that displaces 65k tons should have the word "light" in its description). I need to go back and do some reading on Japanese CVL's. It's been a while.

 

[Director]

As you say, Japan had a pre-war program of building merchant and passenger ships that could, in wartime, be quickly converted to aircraft or seaplane carriers. As far as I know, these were the only light carriers they completed in wartime.

After Midway they adopted a program of basically trying to convert incomplete ships (BB Shinano, CA Ibuki) to carriers as well as starting an impressive number of purpose-built carriers. Unfortunately for Japan, they just didn't have the raw materials and industrial capacity and shipyard capacity to spare - too many other competitors for resources - and very quickly the bottleneck was not flight-decks but planes to put on them.

I'd agree to the extent of saying that no-one really thought small carriers were the preferred way to go - prewar experiments like Hermes and Ranger and Hosho contrasted with Ark Royal and Akagi and Lexington to show that big carriers were exponentially better, ton-for-ton. But a lot of navies tried emergency conversions - the Italian Aquila, German Europa, and the American Cleveland class cruiser conversions as the Independence class, for examples. Britain built a number of light carriers at the end of the war, as I remember. But the conversions were mostly for reasons of speed - they could be gotten into commission more quickly than a new ship could be built. And almost all ran afoul of resource and industrial limitations; only the US had the spare dockyard space and industrial capacity to say, "What, nine cruisers turned into carriers? Sure, no problem. You can pick them up on Thursday. Hey, I'll throw in a nice paint job, too. You want the deck waxed, that's a dollar extra."

Can't say for the others but the American Independence class were probably able to operate bigger, more modern aircraft because of their length of deck. I have the impression that they mostly specialized in fighters as the war went on, but could easily be wrong. Enterprise, the last survivor of the US pre-war mid-size carriers, was used for night-fighters as she could no longer hold a useful number of bigger, heavier modern planes.

 

[danoh]

The best use of the CVL's should be convoy escort. It took the allies a long time to figure this out, but aircraft had a big effect on making Uboats dive for cover. Just a single ship with a handful of planes was enough to provide decisive protection for a convoy.

We should distinguish here between CVL's - light carriers - which were smaller carriers but fast enough to keep up with fleet carriers, and CVE's or slower, cheaper to build escort carriers.

Is the Battle of the Atlantic being handled abstractly, or will we be assigning escorts to individual convoys?

 

[Mannstien]

The problem is, fleet carriers were usually updated to fleet carriers. Akagi and Kaga were not CVL at Midway, and yet they had received extensive modification to fix some of the most... creative attempts early carrier designing had produced, and they were fifteen years old.

I'm not knocking on the historical door, just saying per current known game mechanics that's how I'm going to approach it and I agree

 

[bcoop1701]

@SchwarzKatze @Director thanks for the info on Japanese CVL's and correcting my misconception about their being built post-Midway.

 

[Vidkjaer]

CVL's are in the game as a doctrine research giving you a bouns for something i cannot remember.

 

[chaostk]

CVL's are in the game as a doctrine research giving you a bouns for something i cannot remember.

It's CVE that are represented by a doctrine, not CVL. And according to the wikia, they increase escort efficiency (efficiency of the convoy escort naval mission, I believe)​

 

[Vidkjaer]

It's CVE that are represented by a doctrine, not CVL. And according to the wikia, they increase escort efficiency (efficiency of the convoy escort naval mission, I believe)​

thats right. Sorry, my mistake.

 

[barny]

Considering that the earlier carriers like the Lexington only seem to have 30 planes (if they haven't changed that by now), the problem is rather, that we have no real fleet carriers and instead have light carriers named after fleet carriers.

But yeah, the Naval tech tree looks very lackluster to begin with. Being able to slightly alter classes with experience will only go so far, never mind the fact, that we don't even have graphics for the different classes of the major powers.

Add to that some wrong naming like the Kongo class coming after the Fuso class with the Nagato not existing at all and the whole navy tech and ship building is already due for an overhaul and severe expansion in my opinion.

 

[CHRIS3169]

Wasn't there a www where they showed carriers and said you could put different amounts of planes on them, but the more you put the less effective they are overall?

 

[barny]

Wasn't there a www where they showed carriers and said you could put different amounts of planes on them, but the more you put the less effective they are overall?

You can modify the classes with EXP like you can modify other stuff like tanks or planes as well and with that you can change the amount of planes somewhat, which in turn reduces other stats as you say.

But that only goes so far and you need a lot of exp for that which you will only really get during war times, when you might not build so many capital ships in the first place (if you are not the USA at least).

 

[CHRIS3169]

You can modify the classes with EXP like you can do stuff like tanks or planes as well. And with that you can change the amount of planes somewhat, which in turn reduces other stats as you say.

But that only goes so far and you need a lot of exp for that which you will only really get during war times, when you might not build so many capital ships in the first place (if you are not the USA at least).

There should be some sort of military exercises where you send your fleet on maneuvers to get XP like army exercising...maybe the downside being that if war breaks out your fleet will be vulnerable and could possibly be on the other side of the world conducting maneuvers with allies.

 

[barny]

There should be some sort of military exercises where you send your fleet on maneuvers to get XP like army exercising...maybe the downside being that if war breaks out your fleet will be vulnerable and could possibly be on the other side of the world conducting maneuvers with allies.

They have something like that for ground forces, not sure if it exist for fleets as well, but even then it will hardly be enough to make big modifications. I also don't think, you can add that much to the early carriers. I think you can only get like 5 points on every part of the ship and even if that would be like 5 more planes per point you would only get to 55 for a fully modified Lexington (which would then have terrible other stats, if you don't increase those as well).

Edit: Here is the DD about it, btw: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...velopment-diary-11th-of-december-2015.896886/

Edit2: And here the posting about the upper limit to deck expansion: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-of-december-2015.896886/page-2#post-20339085

 

[Axe99]

Actually, I don't recall Japan constructing any light carriers during the war, only converting existing ships. I'm not really positive, but I think Japan had the idea that purpose-built carriers below a certain size is not worthwhile, so the emergency programs aimed for "medium" carriers and no light carriers were ever laid down.

Would the Unryu class qualify as light carriers? They had fairly high aircraft capacity, but were also fairly fragile - at first glance they feel a bit Ranger-esque and I'd probably classify them as high capacity CVLS rather than (for 1944) relatively low capacity CVs.

On the topic, we'll definitely be modding in both CVLs and CVEs. I don't think they're necessary for a good vanilla HoI4 game (although I personally would prefer them in, or you'd have to wonder why I'd be looking at modding them in, lol), but I do think that as long as they don't mess things up with the AI or balance (which, implemented properly, they hopefully shouldn't) they'll be of value.

 

[bcoop1701]

Would the Unryu class qualify as light carriers? They had fairly high aircraft capacity, but were also fairly fragile - at first glance they feel a bit Ranger-esque and I'd probably classify them as high capacity CVLS rather than (for 1944) relatively low capacity CVs.

Unryu was a modified Hiryu design so I believe it should definitely be a CV. The Japanese went down in capability towards the end of the war in comparison to their Shokaku and Taiho designs because the Unryu design was simpler and could be conpleted more quickly. Not sure how you would simulate that in the game. Probably have the Unryu be a Hiryu modified by XP because in actuality that is pretty much what it was. The follow-on to the Taiho was going to be an Improved-Taiho. I don't know if it was ever given a specific class name because I don't think (I'm not sure of this) one was ever laid down.

 

[jdavis86]

It seems like they could actually offer the player an interesting choice. Sort of quantity v quality, or last resort sort of measure.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Would the Unryu class qualify as light carriers? They had fairly high aircraft capacity, but were also fairly fragile - at first glance they feel a bit Ranger-esque and I'd probably classify them as high capacity CVLS rather than (for 1944) relatively low capacity CVs.

On the topic, we'll definitely be modding in both CVLs and CVEs. I don't think they're necessary for a good vanilla HoI4 game (although I personally would prefer them in, or you'd have to wonder why I'd be looking at modding them in, lol), but I do think that as long as they don't mess things up with the AI or balance (which, implemented properly, they hopefully shouldn't) they'll be of value.

That's what "medium carriers" means. They're not quite the size of the battleship-sized carriers, but still much larger than the cruiser-sized light carriers and can be expected to do the job of fleet carriers. The Japanese called the Hiryū, Sōryū, and the Ūnryu's such (ja: 中型空母, chūgata-kūbo). Hiyō's were similar in capability, but were called auxiliary carriers (特設空母, tokusetsu-kūbo) because they're merchant conversions.

 

[Axe99]

Unryu was a modified Hiryu design so I believe it should definitely be a CV. The Japanese went down in capability towards the end of the war in comparison to their Shokaku and Taiho designs because the Unryu design was simpler and could be conpleted more quickly. Not sure how you would simulate that in the game. Probably have the Unryu be a Hiryu modified by XP because in actuality that is pretty much what it was. The follow-on to the Taiho was going to be an Improved-Taiho. I don't know if it was ever given a specific class name because I don't think (I'm not sure of this) one was ever laid down.

That's what "medium carriers" means. They're not quite the size of the battleship-sized carriers, but still much larger than the cruiser-sized light carriers and can be expected to do the job of fleet carriers. The Japanese called the Hiryū, Sōryū, and the Ūnryu's such (ja: 中型空母, chūgata-kūbo). Hiyō's were similar in capability, but were called auxiliary carriers (特設空母, tokusetsu-kūbo) because they're merchant conversions.

Had a look at the data I've been putting together and I'd classified them as CVs as well. You're both right in that they're just a bit too big to be CVLs. I reckon your approach is spot on BCoop.

 

[Director]

The best use of the CVL's should be convoy escort.

@danoh : Let's be careful here; you have that backwards and then in the next sentence get it right. CVEs are (usually) merchant hulls converted for convoy escort and sub hunting and aircraft transport and training and ground support. CVLs are light fleet carriers: fast but without a lot of aircraft capacity.


For a general rule, I'd class anything 15,000 tons or less and capable of making 24+ knots as a light carrier, and anything 15,000+ and capable of 24+ knots as a fleet carrier. An escort carrier would be smaller and/or slower than that. The big Commencement Bay CVEs were 11,000 tons standard (24,000 tons full load!) and could reach 19 knots.

After I applied the general rule I'd take a close look at any on the boundaries and make a judgement call. And after I looked at the US Navy's freshwater sidewheel carrier, I'd go have a drink and sit quietly in the dark resting my eyes and muttering to myself. (See USS Wolverine, previously Seeandbee, the largest side-wheel steamer in the world when she was launched in 1912).

Just looking at the Japanese aircraft carrier designs, I come away a little perplexed. They had one of the world's best designs in Shokaku and instead of following up on that they kept trying to build a lot of smaller carriers (Taiho being the exception in several ways). Hiryo, Soryu and the Unryu's are nice enough but they aren't individually as economical and capable as an Essex or whatever the Japanese equivalent would be. (By economical I mean that a bigger ship delivers more performance and carrying capacity than two smaller ones - the economies of scale meaning you aren't duplicating weights and equipment). I'd rather have four Shokakus than six Unryus... maybe I just don't get it.

@Admiral Piett , you have any insight here?

 

[Murmeldjuret]

I don't think a CVL class is needed for the game, maybe as an option to emergency emergency build a slightly cheaper version of existing carriers. I would personally not want to waste valuable research and production efficiency for ship types with less punch.
I don't think you gain much gameplay for distinguishing different types of carriers, you can modify them a whole lot with variants. One solution you could have is the ability to convert a ship to carrier by decision, and it would lock out and need a fraction of an actual carrier equipment. Though a general naval DLC with refitting and conversions, minelaying, etc would be nice, but time will tell if PDX thinks the same.

Escort carriers would be useful however, not only as escort but also as dedicated air support for marines, submarine hunting outside of escort duty, and as a plane transport. Things CVE were used for historically.
I can understand CVE not being in, it being a logistical micromanagement by design.