Panzerschiff too weak?

[ow592]

Today I looked a bit into german ship stats

Admiral Graf Spee has twice as much hp, more speed, more armor and costs less than a Panzerschiff. That is a bit odd

Am I wrong?

 

[Hjaldrgud]

You are not wrong. PocketBB is not worth the IC as of right now. When I tried building up a semi-historical Plan Z surface navy, all my panzerschiffe died, while all the Admiral Hipper-class cruisers survived. There is no reason to build them. They can't do commerce raiding and they can't fight effectively in the main battle line.

 

[ow592]

the HP bonus on the cruiser turrets seems to be the problem

two times +40% HP for Graf Spee and nothing for Panzerschiff

 

[Bunnytob]

Admiral Graf Spee has twice as much hp, more speed, more armor and costs less than a Panzerschiff.

Isn't Spee a Panzerschiff?

 

[Beagá]

It was a technological dead end. That no other power had that approach speaks volumes. Go for subs instead for serious convoy destruction. And if the goal is Sea Lion use superheavy BB if you want to do it by 1940 or 41.

 

[Ossiv]

Compared to the historical Deutschland-class "pocket battleships", HOI IV Panzerschiff is much weaker. Historically their side armor was 80mm like in heavy cruisers, and main battery turret faces were 160mm, much more than in heavies. However, in HOI IV Panzerschiff ahistorically has only light cruiser armor (60 mm), not 80mm as Hipper and other heavies. IRL Panzerschiff made 28-29 knots with that heavier armor, in game only 26 knots with lighter armor. Historically, they also did have 8 150 mm secondary guns (as light cruiser main guns); that ordinary heavy cruisers did not have. So to be historical, the template should have one slot of heavy 28cm guns, 2 slots of 15cm secondaries, aa guns, aeroplanes and torpedo tubes, plus better engines to move all that faster than now.

Admiral Graf Speed fought alone quite well agaist three British cruisers, one heavy, two lights. It retreated to Montevideo for repairs, but was in better shape than the British heavy cruiser HMS Exeter; Graf Spee knocked out all Exeter's 8 inch turrets. So, to be historical, Panzerschiff should have also have at least as many HP as a heavy cruiser, preferably more.

I have complained about this before and written it in Suggestions also. Please do the same, maybe they fix this some day.

 

[ow592]

It was a technological dead end. That no other power had that approach speaks volumes. Go for subs instead for serious convoy destruction. And if the goal is Sea Lion use superheavy BB if you want to do it by 1940 or 41.

I don't expect them to be best ship in 1945, but current Panzerschiff would lose against most tier I CA

 

[Beagá]

Not 1vs 1. Armor alone makes the difference.

 

[ow592]

they both pierce each other and the old CA has twice as much HP

Panzerschiff has around 11 piering damage and 3 non-piercing damage against CA I

CA I has 14 piercing damage against Panzerschiff

Panzerschiff has around 100 HP

CA I has around 190 HP

This should be not even close

 

[George Parr]

It was a technological dead end. That no other power had that approach speaks volumes. Go for subs instead for serious convoy destruction. And if the goal is Sea Lion use superheavy BB if you want to do it by 1940 or 41.

It doesn't speak volumes at all. In fact, it completely ignores the actually circumstances that caused this situation. Basically everyone else was bound by Naval Treaties that clearly specified ship-types. And with Germany being bound to build ships only up to 10.000 tons, they tried to find a way to exploit the limitations the other nations faced. No other nation build anything like this because no nation had restrictions like Germany, but at the same time Germany didn't have any of their restrictions, which prevented all the others from building these kind of ships.

By the time the war came around quite a bit of time had passed, and the Naval Treaties started to collapse, allowing for more modern designs to fill the gap that existed. But that doesn't somehow mean that others thought that this approach was useless, it only means that when there was a time to build these kind of ships no one was really in a position to do so due to restriction that were in place.

 

[Brucesim2003]

Historically their side armor was 80mm like in heavy cruisers,

100mm actually

 

[Secret Master]

Existing panzerschiff can be used to alternate convoy raiding with submarines. That's about it. I wouldn't build more than what you have at start.

Ideally, what you want are nice submarines hitting a sea zone. When DD patrols show up to hunt the subs, you want panzerschiff to show up, sink them, but then leave. You don't want panzerschiff staying around long enough for the big guns of the RN to find them. That means having them hit and run.

Do note that in vanilla, a 1940 submarine with RADAR should be better at sinking actual convoys than a panzerschiff. It's just that the panzerschiff should sink DDs trying to escort those convoys without too much effort. And since Repulse and Prince of Wales are useless against submarines, there is value in sinking DDs to provide assistance to your submarines.

 

[Cavalry]

Panzerschiff give the range to the whole fleet (range of the fleet is average). So mix with other ships, and raid where there are no war ship, in the middle of ocean where the enemy cannot discover you.

 

[Pzt_Kami]

Existing panzerschiff can be used to alternate convoy raiding with submarines. That's about it. I wouldn't build more than what you have at start.

Ideally, what you want are nice submarines hitting a sea zone. When DD patrols show up to hunt the subs, you want panzerschiff to show up, sink them, but then leave. You don't want panzerschiff staying around long enough for the big guns of the RN to find them. That means having them hit and run.

Do note that in vanilla, a 1940 submarine with RADAR should be better at sinking actual convoys than a panzerschiff. It's just that the panzerschiff should sink DDs trying to escort those convoys without too much effort. And since Repulse and Prince of Wales are useless against submarines, there is value in sinking DDs to provide assistance to your submarines.

And how this can be done? by lowering "engagement risk" on Panzerschiff task force?

 

[FOARP]

What's needed is a country-specific tech like Japan's "Torpedo Cruiser", because Panzerschiffe really were a thing by themselves and don't fit into the standard progression.

In fact, what's needed in general is country-specific tech-trees.

Existing panzerschiff can be used to alternate convoy raiding with submarines. That's about it. I wouldn't build more than what you have at start.

Ideally, what you want are nice submarines hitting a sea zone. When DD patrols show up to hunt the subs, you want panzerschiff to show up, sink them, but then leave. You don't want panzerschiff staying around long enough for the big guns of the RN to find them. That means having them hit and run.

Do note that in vanilla, a 1940 submarine with RADAR should be better at sinking actual convoys than a panzerschiff. It's just that the panzerschiff should sink DDs trying to escort those convoys without too much effort. And since Repulse and Prince of Wales are useless against submarines, there is value in sinking DDs to provide assistance to your submarines.

Putting my "is this historical?" hat on, OK so the Germans never went after escorts this way*, but were the Panzerschiffe even appropriate for it? I can't see any instance of Panzerschiffe fighting destroyers, their speed was such that destroyers might be able to escape from them. OK so there's Scheer's sinking of HMS Jervis Bay (a merchant cruiser) but this shows why going after the escorts was a bad idea - the distraction created by Jervis Bay allowed most of the convoy it was protecting to escape. Then there was Lützow's failure to score any hits during the raid on PQ17. And whilst Graf Spee fought against light cruisers at the River Plate, the performance of Graf Spee there strongly suggests that tangling with significant numbers of destroyers probably wouldn't have been a great idea.

*is there a reason why doctrine in most navies was that raiders shouldn't go after escorts, but it's the optimal strategy in every computer strategy game I've played?

 

[ow592]

a realisitc amount of HP ( 200 or 250) would make panzerschiff a possible choice for designs

 

[Secret Master]

And how this can be done? by lowering "engagement risk" on Panzerschiff task force?

Yes, but you also withdraw them after a single battle. Move them to an entirely different part of the ocean or just dock them for a month.

What's needed is a country-specific tech like Japan's "Torpedo Cruiser", because Panzerschiffe really were a thing by themselves and don't fit into the standard progression.

In fact, what's needed in general is country-specific tech-trees.



Putting my "is this historical?" hat on, OK so the Germans never went after escorts this way*, but were the Panzerschiffe even appropriate for it? I can't see any instance of Panzerschiffe fighting destroyers, their speed was such that destroyers might be able to escape from them. OK so there's Scheer's sinking of HMS Jervis Bay (a merchant cruiser) but this shows why going after the escorts was a bad idea - the distraction created by Jervis Bay allowed most of the convoy it was protecting to escape. Then there was Lützow's failure to score any hits during the raid on PQ17. And whilst Graf Spee fought against light cruisers at the River Plate, the performance of Graf Spee there strongly suggests that tangling with significant numbers of destroyers probably wouldn't have been a great idea.

*is there a reason why doctrine in most navies was that raiders shouldn't go after escorts, but it's the optimal strategy in every computer strategy game I've played?

I never said it was historical. Only that it was s good use of them.

 

[wesleytj]

The way the Total War mod handles them is far superior to the base game, you should check that out. In that, the Panzerschiff are a good quality option. I upgrade and build those instead of heavy cruisers until I get to the two "discounted" Bismarck Class you get.

After those, I go back and build Panzerschiff again because they're cheaper, but by then they have really good floatplanes and aa and such. It's all the capitals the Germans need and then some, because like most players probably, their focus is on NAV bombers and subs.

So they are most definitely a viable platform there.

 

[FOARP]

I never said it was historical. Only that it was s good use of them.

Not saying you were SM, it's just that whenever something like this comes along I think it's always worth asking - should it be like this?

 

[Beagá]

Ok I´ll admit that I didn´t check the stats before my post, but that is because I thought it was obvious a 15000 ton ship would have MUCH better stats. So yeah I was wrong, sorry. But not as wrong as Pdox, I guess...

So correcting, with CURRENT stats they are awful (and yes should be much better than at least a tier 1 cruiser), but if with BETTER and closer to historical stats, they would have at least a niche use. Correcting the HP would make a decent difference.

Better than subs cost for cost to raid? No. Submarines would have been deadly in larger numbers in 1939 and 40.

As for the treaty by 1936 they simply didn´t care. That´s why Germany can build super heavy battleships - they aren´t tied by treaty anymore.​