Since they are "fixing" the light attack CA meta what will be the point of heavy cruisers?
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What's the point of heavy cruisers post-BBA?
- Thread starter Xinamon
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Not a navy guy, so....a question:
Was there an IRL point in the first place?
Was there an IRL point in the first place?
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While a CA might be more cost effective, a BB/BC will still be able to stack on more guns. Which means cost effective might not be the be-all/end-all it is right now. Thanks to how naval battles are so...one decisive and done...having a lot of reserve CAs won't really help that much. And if the devs manage to complete their objectives after all tweaks, just throwing every CA into the same fleet won't be an option.
I think it will come down to if they manage to change how air and naval AA interact. And with various bugs being accidentally addressed, we could get a situation where they can be more than just bomber targets
To answer the question, CAs don't burn as much fuel, so if you need a little extra armor or hard attack in your patrol fleets, that could be a good use for them
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The stated purpose of the tweaks is to reduce the amount of ships per fleet, and therefore per battle
Right now, naval conflicts tend to be one big fight at which point the loser is too beat up to try again for a very long time
These two facts combine to mean that with fewer ships per battle, and only one or two real battles, you want each ship to be the best possible
That at least is the stated purpose from the Dev Diary. Whether the tweaks proposed will succeed at that is unknown at this time (and they'll probably be playing with it up until zero hour), but this is their intent
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The IRL point was, those were the largest cruiser designs permitted by the various naval treaties.
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Usually it was leading patrols or raiding (even Britain originally intended to raid in the Pacific with its CAs); right now, the game treats them as mini capital ships, which is nothing akin to their historic use. Even a destroyer was better-equipped to engage a battleship than a heavy cruiser, because even if both carried torpedoes a DD could evade gunfire more easily (and for the same cost, you might have 5-7 of them).
Realistically, the only difference between CLs and CAs was the size of gun, but that largely manifested in whether you were achieving a "mission kill" (aka 6-inch gunfire wrecks the superstructure of a cruiser and forces it to retreat) or cause actual hull damage (8-inch gunfire is much more likely to cause flooding or penetrate armor in critical areas, making them better for actually sinking cruisers). For perspective, 8-inch guns would tend to have double the explosive charge in AP shells, and triple the penetration of 6-inch guns (comparing interwar US and UK cruiser guns).
8-inch shells don't have the same dramatic difference in capabilities versus 6-inch guns that capital ship guns have--a 16-inch shell might have double the bursting charge of a 14-inch shell, and similar rate-of-fire. That said, it's also sort of the point. CAs may have evolved from armored cruisers, but most early heavy cruisers were built to serve as light cruisers (only the Zara and Baltimore classes boasted significant armor; by comparison, pre-WWI armored cruisers typically boasted battlecruiser-equivalent protection). A realistic depiction of CAs would overlap CLs, but would have anti-cruiser specialization due to the heavier guns (lower rate-of-fire means less effectiveness against small/soft targets like DDs, but higher damage against cruisers with decent armor). That would require an armor rework though, since currently armor is ineffective (although it blocks critical hits, armor is almost never cost-effective in major battles).
There are other issues regarding ship sizes that exacerbate the CL/CA issue in-game, though (e.g. adding light guns is almost always cost-effective on CLs, whereas this is very much not-the-case for capital ships). The lack of naval "combat width" also is a huge part of the problem, since everything devolves into calculating maximum damage output per screened capital ship (where battleships really should beat cruisers).
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Cruisers with secondary batteries will still likely be the best way to counter light attack DDs or CLs
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Is real life heavy attack gun of CA really worse than light attack cruiser gun against DD or CL?
We can think about double profile, the heavy gun of CA can be at least the same effective as LC guns vs CL, and better vs capital ships. That will boost the use of CA in this game. Otherwise CA is not good choice because they cannot stand the numerous BB fire. Any wounded BB can be repaired cheaply, but a sunk CA is a complete loss.
We can think about double profile, the heavy gun of CA can be at least the same effective as LC guns vs CL, and better vs capital ships. That will boost the use of CA in this game. Otherwise CA is not good choice because they cannot stand the numerous BB fire. Any wounded BB can be repaired cheaply, but a sunk CA is a complete loss.
1.) Against destroyers, yes; it's a combination of rate-of-fire and weight. A triple 6-inch gun is lighter than a twin 8-inch gun on average (e.g. the Mogami gained weight when it swapped its five 6-inch triple turrets for 8-inch twin turrets); despite this, you're looking at half the rate of fire on average (per barrel, a New Orleans or County-class CA fired 3-4 rounds per minute, whereas a Town-class CL fired 6-8 and a Brooklyn 8-10). Or in other words, a comparable heavy cruiser might dish out at-best 27 rounds per minute compared to an equivalent light cruiser at-worst 72. While the CA's rounds might hit harder, against a destroyer it doesn't make as much difference due to the lack of armor (particularly-given the lower differences between 6-inch and 8-inch HE shell charges).
2.) Against light cruisers, no. If the cruiser is badly-armored, it doesn't particularly matter which gun it had, since they're dishing out the same volume of actual firepower. Against armored cruisers (3-4 inch belts) the 8-inch gun makes a very big difference. Also, the ability to engage at longer range doesn't help much versus destroyers; while still difficult to hit, a cruiser is a much larger and taller target.
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The only practical purpose for CAs in the game and IRL was to counter other cruisers since they can't stand up to BCs and BBs but aren't much cheaper. CLs are much more versatile because they can fulfill multiple roles and are very cheap compared to the CA, BC, and BB categories. If I am playing as a naval power I will build more CLs than any other ship except DDs. Losing CLs in combat isn't that costly and the highest tech CLs are very capable for screening, AA, raiding, escorts. and patrolling.
So yes, it's a good question - what will be the point of CAs?
So yes, it's a good question - what will be the point of CAs?
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I'd say it's more about org: except for destroyers, ships tend to have HP pools that last way longer under fire than their org (by my rough estimates having HP pool two times larger than org will see ship retreating by the time it reaches 0 org - unless incoming damage is really large, but that's more of SHBB territory - everything else is excessive). With 0 org ship will just sit there, useless (AFAIK, ships retreat based on HP, not org). With CA you get much more org, comparable (if also better) HA and HP for the same IC investment... not to mention, CAs tend to be harder to hit.
Now, if armour on CA becomes mandatory, that might shift balance towards battleships.
Edit: people claiming CAs not standing up to numerous BB fire can try their hand at this
Challenge: How would you build a fleet to defeat the Royal Navy?
Britannia rules the waves: but not for long. Can you build a fleet that can rival the power of the world's foremost naval power? Setup: Every surface ship in the 1936 Royal Navy is on patrol in the Western Mediterranean and Italy wants you to...
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Not sure if Italy won by 30 CA or 90DD! Number advantage will win. I play extreme cases like Netherland navy vs German, Italy, and Japanese; or Spain navy. A CL can run away but a CA can get sudden death, no chance to repair. Usually I can win when I can build enough 20CL and 40DD, or a bit sooner.Edit: people claiming CAs not standing up to numerous BB fire can try their hand at this
would be interesting to see BB/BC fleets that are be somewhat competitive for a change.Challenge: How would you build a fleet to defeat the Royal Navy?
Britannia rules the waves: but not for long. Can you build a fleet that can rival the power of the world's foremost naval power? Setup: Every surface ship in the 1936 Royal Navy is on patrol in the Western Mediterranean and Italy wants you to...forum.paradoxplaza.com
One hopes not; they are also revamping armor apparently, so potentially there will be piercing issues.
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Towards the end of the naval rebalance dev post:
"Armor
In addition to the new modifiers below for armor a review of armor values and piercing is planned, but I don’t have a completed set of changes for that yet so you will have to wait for future announcements on how that looks."
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Thanks. Somehow I skipped over that multiple times when I thought I was being very careful to read the whole thing before I asked.