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There is a bit of a semantic dance that hasn't been addressed. Recently, someone started another thread where they were talking about changing some of the details regarding Greece. One of their points was that there were a couple ships that the Greeks referred to as 'battleships' but were in practice closer to heavy cruiser in size and character with other ships of the period. Why was it called a battleship? Maybe it was because it was the biggest ship in their fleet. I don't actually know, but I think there is an answer.
The word "battleship" is extremely vague. Its only because we have static references, specifically from HoI1 and HoI2, as well as the doctrines of the day from the larger powers that deployed navies, that we all refer to specific ships as "battleships". Tell me; how many countries with coastlines on the Mediterrainian and Atlantic did not have at least one "battleship" by their own definition?
If a country has no battleships, were they at all considered a naval power? If we were to go back to 1938, and ask the experts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, U.S., Soviet Union and Japan "does a navy need battleships?" what would be their answer?
If the leader of a nation told his people "we're going to take the seas from our enemies" and there were no battleships in their navy, how would the people react?
I suspect battleships are incredibly important. The CV has to earn its role in replacing battleships by having battleships around to be compared to.
The word "battleship" is extremely vague. Its only because we have static references, specifically from HoI1 and HoI2, as well as the doctrines of the day from the larger powers that deployed navies, that we all refer to specific ships as "battleships". Tell me; how many countries with coastlines on the Mediterrainian and Atlantic did not have at least one "battleship" by their own definition?
If a country has no battleships, were they at all considered a naval power? If we were to go back to 1938, and ask the experts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, U.S., Soviet Union and Japan "does a navy need battleships?" what would be their answer?
If the leader of a nation told his people "we're going to take the seas from our enemies" and there were no battleships in their navy, how would the people react?
I suspect battleships are incredibly important. The CV has to earn its role in replacing battleships by having battleships around to be compared to.
Historically, one place in the world where the BB was superior to the CV (at least most of the time) was the far north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_North_Cape
A CV in december 1943 north of the north cape would (IMO) have been pretty worthless.
As HOI3 seems to reflect weather effects, the big question is if there will be any incentive to fight out there.
So, if the lend-lease will be managed like in HOI2 (An event where you just pay x supplies in the US and instantly the USSR gets y factories e.t.c.), there will be no incentive to send a ship to that location.
If the lend lease will be shipped via a convoy to the USSR - maybe a lend lease event that is only triggered if you get 20 troop transports to Murmansk or you have to convoy the supplies in to the USSR - then there would be a huge incentive for Germany to operate there (preventing the lend lease event to fire) and, accordingly, a huge incentive for the allies to combat those German units.
Best regards,
Roland
A CV in december 1943 north of the north cape would (IMO) have been pretty worthless.
As HOI3 seems to reflect weather effects, the big question is if there will be any incentive to fight out there.
So, if the lend-lease will be managed like in HOI2 (An event where you just pay x supplies in the US and instantly the USSR gets y factories e.t.c.), there will be no incentive to send a ship to that location.
If the lend lease will be shipped via a convoy to the USSR - maybe a lend lease event that is only triggered if you get 20 troop transports to Murmansk or you have to convoy the supplies in to the USSR - then there would be a huge incentive for Germany to operate there (preventing the lend lease event to fire) and, accordingly, a huge incentive for the allies to combat those German units.
Best regards,
Roland
There is actually one more reason for BBs. Carriers, especially the soft deck US and Japanese varieties, are quite vulnerable, and really work best if operating a couple of hundred miles off the coast. In the European theater, be it the North Sea or the Mediterranean, a carrier task force would have been a fat target for land based aviation. In the late war period, US carrier air wings consisted almost exclusively of fighters, but their successes against land based Japanese aircraft were still to a large extent due to the lack of good aircraft and aircrew on the Japanese side. So why risk your carriers against Fw190s if you have Mustangs to provide top cover from land bases? Much better to establish a presence using cruisers and old battleships, which were more survivable, and not high-priority targets anyway.
Yes this is difficult to model though. Carriers had nowhere near the armor of most modern BB and were more ambush hunters while BB controlled any sea it was within short range of. Just think of playing HoI2. If Germany has only subs or small ships the worry to keep much UK fleet near the main islands is pretty minor. Germany with CV or BB is still dangerous.
BB might not project power as far as CV without planes but it still projects wherever it goes and forces enemy navy to deal with it. BB also has AA working 100% of the time or until blown up while CV has to launch fighters. In a situation where carrier is fighting shore based air which can launch and recover more quickly it is at a disadvantage.
I know people hate the naval bombers in HoI2 but I think really the only part they are broken is the range. Keep them shorter range and its fine. CV and BB both vulnerable to enemy air attack just that CV with ability to project its power from further away and its not always as obvious where its sitting vs a BB you can see on the horizon...
A question I haven't seen answer is that since naval battles roll for each ship individually for positioning how does it work when say a SAG is attacked from air? By either CAG or land based air? Should be big chance for many ships not even to be seen while increase in radar techs thru the war makes the possibility of seeing and sinking and large ships like BB or CV more likely.
Also if you are Germany in HoI2 and want to Sea Lion England but not do it gamey ways. The fastest way to secure channel and destroy UK fleet is with BBs. CV will dance around for months before sinking most of UK fleet while a SAG will sink most UK fleet in 2 or 3 engagements.
That was also way CV so powerful in HoI2. When BB engage CV it was 100% till battle finished. It should actually be more like port strikes where planes from CV swarm in for 1-2 hours max then 1 hour lull then back. If player with CV fleet wants to take no risks he does one run then disengages from BB fleet before BB has chance to score much hits and repeatedly does that. However- if thinks can sink the BB fleet then might do a 2nd run but BB get much closer in the meantime and can really pound the CV much faster than an air attack. Even Yamamoto had 300 planes vs it for quite a while. A single super BB but in a large fleet engagement how many times can 300 planes concentrate on 1 individual enemy ship?
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Now that CV's are floating airbases (instead of ships with 200km guns
) this might hopefully be the case.
Imo Naval bombers are unnecessary in HoI3.
If you want short ranged torpedo bombers you build CAGs (would be a very bad design decision to not let these operate from land bases).
If you want long range naval bombers you need to accept that these are not so effective so using TACs or STRAT work fine. This is what ALL nations did historically. The tech system does support research in antishipping ammo to raise their stats individually.
I think one other unit could be needed instead of naval bombers, the floatplane that can be based in ports, and on Cruisers/BBs instead of airbases and are a good scouting unit but very low combat stats. This would be fairly tricky to model and you could either go for long range ones based in ports, or for shipbased medium ranged single engine floatplanes that operated in much smaller numbers.
Recon is a really important aspect of the naval war and should not be left out of the equasion, especially not now when we have goodies such as beeing able to shadow fleets and multiple detection levels implemented.
BBs did actually provide alot better scouting abilities than destroyers just because their 2-3 floatplanes that could operate up to 1000km away in some cases in the pacific.
BBs in this period were horribly outclassed at the end but I don't believe that they ever became useless. With the invention of the guided missile guided missile surface warships could still provide a serious threat to carriers.
I dont really know if its appropriate to talk about this in the WW2 period or even about the period directly after it, I just dont really know enough about this, but a BB still had a role to play and if guided missile cruisers or similar ships were built they could still pose a threat.
Maybe it's more likely that Germany would take this route particularly with their preference for rockets, with possibly the construction of something similar to the Kirov class equipped with something similar to the V1 and other missiles.
I dont really know if its appropriate to talk about this in the WW2 period or even about the period directly after it, I just dont really know enough about this, but a BB still had a role to play and if guided missile cruisers or similar ships were built they could still pose a threat.
Maybe it's more likely that Germany would take this route particularly with their preference for rockets, with possibly the construction of something similar to the Kirov class equipped with something similar to the V1 and other missiles.
The only missile guidance thats feasable to hit warships with using techs in reach of WW2 is regreatbly human guidance. Therefor I think Japan would be the nation most likely to embrace anti ship missiles (with ranges above 50km) in a prolonged conflict. They even had a short range working one that failed to score any real results due the control of the air needed to launch them. Their range was only 36km, but In the event of a land invasion of Japan I can imagine these launched from land beeing a serious threat to shipping.
I beg to differ. Yes, nations at the time mostly used their regular TAC or STRAT bombers against ships, but not always the same squadrons, that performed the ground attack role. Usually the planes were modified in some way to accommodate the naval strike role or were designed with it in mind, for example so that they could carry torpedoes. But, much more importantly the plane crews received special training on how to properly conduct this type of mission. If I am not mistaken, land based bombers, without specially trained crews, were by and large ineffective against ships.
This could be implemented in HoI by allowing the player to modify an existing TAC unit, e.g. by adding a special brigade attachment, to simulate the modifications and extra training.
Other than that, I agree that a dedicated naval strike aircraft doesn't make much sense in this time-period.
I dont know towards the end of the war some guided systems did exist such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VB-6_Felix or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X, though I agree with you that its more stuff for a war in the 50s rather than the 40s.
I guess till then the BB is just expensive naval artillary. Same as stuff like Harm and SHarm. Though tbh I would prefer if Harm were implemented a little better they seem far too poor for what their actual impact was.
I guess till then the BB is just expensive naval artillary. Same as stuff like Harm and SHarm. Though tbh I would prefer if Harm were implemented a little better they seem far too poor for what their actual impact was.
This I belive is represented best by air doctrine research already.
You do got a point about modifications, but the Industrial costs of these are so small that its pointless to actually "build" them in our IC system. Better would be a toggle between naval or ground role that had the airwing loose all their org.
Nestorius: I wouldn't count 5 km (range of Fritz X) as a real guided missile. It did require air superiorty and lack of AA to be fired and manually guided to its target. I belive the US variant was something similair dropped straight above target but working without a human guiding it.
None of these are even close to weapon that you can fire from other ships.
I hope there is a change in the way air doctrine works, tbh the tree was far too extensive for what it is. a shorter tree like for land or navel doctrines would be far better.
The problem with the BB / carrier thing is that in HOI2 it's impossible to mix them properly (use BB as carrier escort and have it actually do its job) so you'd want CVLs mixed in CTF fleets as 'tanks' :rofl:
Whenever you put a carrier, the whole fleet would try to stay at carrier ranges, rendering the BS largely useless as a carrier escort. Hopefully the new naval engine will fix that and mixing BBs/etc together with carriers is going to make sense.
Whenever you put a carrier, the whole fleet would try to stay at carrier ranges, rendering the BS largely useless as a carrier escort. Hopefully the new naval engine will fix that and mixing BBs/etc together with carriers is going to make sense.
It is fixed. The fact that CAGs are a separate entity means they will take damage from defending AA to the degree when they might have to be called off. Adding Battleships to a Fleet thats under carrier attack will enhance its AA and they can take more punishment than any other ship.
In the latest screenshot of naval stats (USA in 1938) Battleships have twice the hitpoints/strenght, six times the air attack and four times the air defense of Carriers.
Are BB fleets useless in HOI2? I've been reading Remble's Japan Gotterdammerung AAR and he uses them to great effect - by superhuman intelligence gathering that lets him make sure they always attack at night or in horrible weather.
yeah but that scenario requires you to use what you have, if you are playing from 36 it's easily possible to only use Japanese starting BBs if at all. I didnt read the aar though.
Actually, this is the biggest reason why the Iowa Class Battleships were finally decomissioned. By the time they were in service in the 1980s, they were basically oversized missile cruisers that carried 16" guns and had a lot more Armor. If I remember correctly what the tour guide at the Battleship New Jersey was telling me, it actually carried less missiles than contemporary missile cruisers.
The problem is ship armor is about as useful against missiles as Knight's armor is against bullets. The size of a Battleship makes it an easy target for missiles.
The Iowa's were brought back in service for the same reason battleships always have been -- national prestige. They were recomissioned to counter the Soviet Orlan (Kirov) Class of Battlecruisers being built in the naval race tradition.
I dont remember that the Iowa had such a low missile complement though it was mostly recommishend for its shore bombardment role.
either way I was more thinking about having late tech cruisers, BBs etc into more of a guided missile role, though tbh its really more for some future expansion.
either way I was more thinking about having late tech cruisers, BBs etc into more of a guided missile role, though tbh its really more for some future expansion.
The use of armour today is debatable. It is most likely harder to sink using missiles - or anything really - then a modern, unarmoured ship. Nearly all anti-ship missiles today do not have very large warheads, most are within the 150-300kg range.
However, the expense of it is huge, while the protection isn't all that great vs larger anti-ship missiles (although, if you look at the USS Cole attack, a similar attack on a WW2 era armoured ship would result in scratching some paint).
But its primary armament is obsolete. 16" guns are useful for shore bombardment and that is preety much it - the chance a BB would ever be in a position (range) to fire them in modern times vs another ship is next to none.
At any rate, I hope the new naval system will make battleships valuable in a mixed carrier-BB fleet, as it should be.
They need to consider adding naval squadrons in so you can link ships together in smaller forces inside fleets that when in action support each other. This is particularly relevant to battleships considering they historically were susceptible to massive air attack or undersea torpedo attack.
This whole idea of independent positioning sounds good in theory but I think it's going to end up leaving things like battleships high and dry when engaging enemy fleets using submarines or carriers. I'd rather not see my ASW equipped destroyers running off to chase enemy screening ships when they are supposed to be stopping submarines sinking my EXTREMELY valuable big gun battleship.
This whole idea of independent positioning sounds good in theory but I think it's going to end up leaving things like battleships high and dry when engaging enemy fleets using submarines or carriers. I'd rather not see my ASW equipped destroyers running off to chase enemy screening ships when they are supposed to be stopping submarines sinking my EXTREMELY valuable big gun battleship.