Ship variant areas?

[Denkt]

It would be interesting to know which 4 areas you can focus on for each ship class. Like can you improve destroyers anti air weapons and anti submarine ability?

I guess engine and reliability is for all ships so that leave 2 areas left for each ship class.

What we know:

• Carriers: Deckspace and Armor
• Submarine: Stealth and torpedoes

My guess:

• Destroyer: Anti submarine, anti air or torpedoes
• Light Cruiser: Anti air, armor or torpedoes
• Heavy Cruiser: Main guns and armor
• Battleships (including battlecruiser and super heavy battleship): Main guns and armor

 

[Orlunu]

The AA DDs never really worked, so I'm guessing for torps and AWS on the subs, AA and armour on the cruisers.

 

[Denkt]

Which areas each ship class can focus on is very important for the naval game. If destroyers are the only ship that can really fight submarine it make them very important then the enemy use submarine.

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

With upgrading, will you only be able to increase qualities? Can you subtract to reduce a unit's cost? If I want to optimize my destroyers for ASW, can I strip them of armor and surface weapons to make them into cheap, quick to produce *cough* corvettes?

 

[Orlunu]

With upgrading, will you only be able to increase qualities? Can you subtract to reduce a unit's cost? If I want to optimize my destroyers for ASW, can I strip them of armor and surface weapons to make them into cheap, quick to produce *cough* corvettes?

Only increase, yes. People have talked about modding in the stripping, though.

 

[MonkeyFuzz]

Only increase, yes. People have talked about modding in the stripping, though.

Nuts.

 

[xtfoster]

You forgot Reliability (which offsets the reduction in reliability (i.e., susceptibility to critical hits) caused by the other upgrades), so that really only leaves 3 for each type.

Engines (speed and/or range) for almost all types leaving 2 for each type.

Of those 2 everything except Submarines, Destroyers, and maybe Light Cruisers will be able to upgrade armor, leaving 1 which will probably be their Main Guns (which is deckspace for carriers).

Light Cruisers probably have AA to replace armor (to replicate those CLAA)
Destroyers probably replace armor with ASW and guns with Torps.
And we know subs have stealth and Torps.

 

[Mannstien]

Anyone notice in the WWW stream when Johan pulled up the Carriers to look at them they had a Shore bombardment value? I would have thought it odd but the one CV had it with no planes lol?

 

[JRiemer]

Anyone notice in the WWW stream when Johan pulled up the Carriers to look at them they had a Shore bombardment value? I would have thought it odd but the one CV had it with no planes lol?

Carriers still have dual-purpose cannons, some more than others, don't they?

 

[LordOfWar16]

Dont forget that you can improve the engines (speed) for most of the ship classes aswell .

 

[Axe99]

Carriers still have dual-purpose cannons, some more than others, don't they?

They do, but the vast majority were not more capable than the kind of guns you'd find on a destroyer, and CVs in game need to handle both full CVs and CVLs (and some CVLs, like the US Independence class, didn't even have 4-5" guns). I'd be surprised if it represented that, unless every DD is going to get a shore bombardment value as well. Might be the case though, you never know .

 

[Denkt]

Well I have already mentioned engine and reliability

I guess engine and reliability is for all ships so that leave 2 areas left for each ship class.

Destroyers pretty much have to be able to upgrade their anti submarine abilities otherwise submarines will be uncounterable. If anti air is the other area it would make destroyers a pure support ship, torpedos would be more interesting.

Light cruisers could be your main ship if you need anti air firepower and I think torpedoes here is a better choice then armor for the same reason as destroyers.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

The AA DDs never really worked,

What? I thought 5"/38 was the ultimate AAA?

 

[Denkt]

What? I thought 5"/38 was the ultimate AAA?

I guess you can say that this was the normal gun for a destroyer, so all destroyers should have good anti air value.

 

[dave_r_gilbert]

I guess you can say that this was the normal gun for a destroyer, so all destroyers should have good anti air value.

Not true.
For the RN the 4.7" was the standard main gun, and it was useless at AA. In the mid-war period some of the tribal class removed 4.7s so they could fit 4"AA instead.
The German, Italian, and French likewise.
The Japanese main DD gun had theoretical AA ability, but couldn't track fast enough to be able to keep up with modern aircraft. So that wasn't much use either.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

I guess you can say that this was the normal gun for a destroyer, so all destroyers should have good anti air value.

That's US having better AA on their destroyers, the Japanese 5 inch AA and 5 inch surface guns weren't really suitable for each other's task, and it isn't until the 10 cm/65 came out did Japan have an actually DP gun that works well in both purposes.

 

[CV10]

Carriers still have dual-purpose cannons, some more than others, don't they?

As late as October, 1941, the Lexington and Saratoga mounted 8 In. guns in four twin turrets. A lot of older carriers had heavier guns because when they were built, Admirals worried about them being caught up in surface actions and thought that giving them heavy gun armaments would help defend against this. As one might expect, this was not an effective solution.

 

[Denkt]

Sweden did build destroyers with similar sized guns as the americans did who like the american guns could be used against air targets.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

Sweden did build destroyers with similar sized guns as the americans did who like the american guns could be used against air targets.

Built by Bofors, who spend like 80% of their research points into AA

 

[Denkt]

Bofors was one of the first to build automatic guns for ships.

Bofors 152 mm M42 gun could maybe fire at air targets 15 km away with 45 kg shells and manage a fire rate of atleast 10 shells a minute, maybe even more. Even today this gun is used on the last gun cruiser in the world BAP Almirante Grau.

I think bofors 120 mm M44 which was used on the Öland class destroyer (the latest destoyer class Sweden built in the time period HOI4 is about) could fire 20 rounds a minute and could reach air targets 9 km or so. It seems like it had a muzzle velocity of about 850 m/s compared to the 5 inch gun who had a muzzle velocity of maybe 760 m/s.