Battlecruisers?

[kcdzim]

@Imperious:

A D12 system is definitely coming but i feel we need both systems. many people just prefer D6 and we cant lose them at all.

SO make both D12 and D6 by all means.

Sure why not.  Not playing D12 here though.  I don’t own a D12, to begin with.  Unless someone gave me 20 for free, I doubt I ever will.  I have no use for them and don’t play A&A enough with d6s as it is.

The nice thing about D6s is that there are only 4 hit options and this game is essentially a beer and pretzel game.  Using d12, there’s so much gradation possible that 4 dice colors isn’t an option.  and it takes longer to throw.  and count.  etc etc etc.

D6 for me.  4 colors, all in one (or two, if it’s a huuuuuuge battle) throw.  That’s the way to go.

All you need to do to shorten the game is assign one color to each hit condition.  Whites 1, Blacks 2, Red/black 3, black/red 4.  Throw all the dice and EVERY UNIT is covered in one throw.  The only time it doesn’t work is subs (but they often fire first anyway but just give them another color) or AA hits (which are fired against each plane anyway).

I would gladly trade my combat dice in for a set of nicely design Hit Dice, with a hit or miss marker behind the pips.

[Tigerman77]

@Imperious:

A D12 system is definitely coming but i feel we need both systems. many people just prefer D6 and we cant lose them at all.

SO make both D12 and D6 by all means.

Thats fine, I’m partial to the D12! I started using it last year and it is so much better. I know people don’t like to change but going to a D12 would be for ther better

[crsluggo]

@kcdzim:

I would gladly trade my combat dice in for a set of nicely design Hit Dice, with a hit or miss marker behind the pips.

Now that’s a neat idea!! Has anyone manufactured such a die?

[Pvt.Ryan]

Correct me if I’m wrong but a battle crusier is basically a mini-battleship or a super-crusier.

[Imperious Leader]

It has smaller guns than BB, but more like a Jr. Battleship with the speed of a cruiser, but with the armor plating of one as well.

They were first introduced in WW1 and used for long range cruising. They outclassed any cruiser and could run with them and could have the same range.  Otherwise Cruisers would just outrun the slower battleships and avoid battle or the range of bigger guns

[DrLarsen]

Considering that most true battlecruisers were either up to or close to battleship standards in armament but not armor, I’d say it makes more sense to make them 4-4-3 units that can only take 1 hit!  With 11" being the smallest BC gun and 8" the largest cruiser gun, and the typical battlecruiser being 2-3 times the weight of a cruiser (Indeed, BC’s actually tended to be a little bit LONGER than battleships of the same design generation.)

If dropping down to 1 hit makes them a deal-breaker… Well, welcome to what caused BC’s to fall out of favor!  Of course, with most folks now playing with 2-hit aircraft carriers, maybe it makes more sense to elevate battleships to 3 hits, as BC’s were armored at about the levels the levels of an aircraft carrier, give or take.

[knp7765]

Very interesting idea, Dr Larsen.  Push battleships up to 3 hits and have carriers and battlecruisers at 2 hits.  Boy, that would really make you think twice about attacking any fleet with a battleship in it.  Get some bad dice and it could be a long battle for you.  I think we should implement this idea if we do get a battlecruiser piece.  OR, we could even use WOTC battleships to represent battlecruisers once we get the new FMG battleships.
By the way, did you know that British ACs had armored decks?  They were a real asset to the Allies in the closing months of the Pacific campaign because they could better withstand kamikaze attacks.  That just makes me wonder if that should be represented in the game somehow.  Like maybe only British carriers should take 2 hits to sink.  Or should we leave it for all nations’ carriers?  Just a thought.
Coachofmany has mentioned the possibility of coming out with some naval supplement sets later on.  I had an idea he really liked:  Escort Carriers.  Cheaper than fleet carriers, 10-12 IPCs, same on attack/defense, can carry only 1 TAC or fighter, 1 hit to sink.  I was originally thinking 2 on movement but maybe that could be increased to 3 with battlecruisers.  Escort Carriers were smaller and faster than the big fleet carriers and since battlecruisers were also faster, maybe these two could work in tandem.  Maybe coach will come out with battlecruiser pieces in his naval sets as well.  I would like to see the Scharnhorst and USS Alaska.  I even think the HMS Hood would be great for the British battlecruiser.  Sure, it got pasted by the Bismarck, but it was still a fantastic ship.  It just got outgunned is all.  Plus, battlecruisers aren’t supposed to match up against battleships anyway.

[DrLarsen]

A couple of points:

1. Escort carriers were actually much SLOWER than fleet carriers.  They were built primarily from converted transport hulls.  There was a separate category of carriers that were fast enough to keep up with the main fleet carriers but were smaller.  Those were called “Light Fleet Carriers” (CVL’s) rather than “Escort Carriers” (CVE’s).  CVL’s were typically converted from cruiser hulls (The Independence class CVL’s were conversions from Cleveland class cruiser hulls.)  The primary mission of Escort carriers was ASW, which is why they didn’t need much speed, and since you can never have enough convoy escorts, they wanted their CVE’s to be as cheap as possible… It is for much the same reason that the Destroyer Escorts (DE’s) were a little slower than top-of-the-line fleet destoyers: they needed to be faster than a slow convoy or a sub, but not fast enough to keep up with a fast carrier attack force.

2. Actually, BC’s would make more sense as fleet carrier escorts than slow BB’s, since fleet carriers were faster than “standard” battleships.  (Of course, this only goes for the older generation of battleships, as the newer battleships were much faster than the old ones.)

3. The main secondary role that CVE’s undertook was amphibious support… which interestingly tended to be the role to which old battleships ended up being relegated.  Thus, if you check out the Order of Battle for the Pacific Fleet at Leyte you see two fleets:

3rd Fleet: essentially the “Blue-Water Strike Fleet,” which included CV’s, CVL’s, new/fast BB’s, CA’s, CL’s, & DD’s

7th Fleet: essentially the “Brown-Water Amphibious Fleet,” which included CVE’s, old/slow BB’s, DD’s, DE’s, and transports.

I don’t think that the US had any of the Alaska-class CB’s operational yet, but when they did, they became part of… you guessed it, the fast strike fleet, not the slow invasion fleet.

[DrLarsen]

@knp7765:

Very interesting idea, Dr Larsen.  Push battleships up to 3 hits and have carriers and battlecruisers at 2 hits.  Boy, that would really make you think twice about attacking any fleet with a battleship in it.  Get some bad dice and it could be a long battle for you.  I think we should implement this idea if we do get a battlecruiser piece.  OR, we could even use WOTC battleships to represent battlecruisers once we get the new FMG battleships.
By the way, did you know that British ACs had armored decks?  They were a real asset to the Allies in the closing months of the Pacific campaign because they could better withstand kamikaze attacks.  That just makes me wonder if that should be represented in the game somehow.  Like maybe only British carriers should take 2 hits to sink.  Or should we leave it for all nations’ carriers?  Just a thought.

Well, that’s a thought, especially if BC’s are stripped of the 2-hit sink advantage: having BC’s take the same # of hits as standard fleet carriers makes sense, seeing as about a third of the top-notch fleet carriers in service at the beginning of the war were built on BC hulls.  If British CV’s get an armor advantage, though, they should have a penalty in aircraft capacity, because that was the trade-off: in order to build a carrier within treaty limits you basically had to sacrifice either the armored deck or the aircraft capacity…

Maybe coach will come out with battlecruiser pieces in his naval sets as well.  I would like to see the Scharnhorst and USS Alaska.  I even think the HMS Hood would be great for the British battlecruiser.  Sure, it got pasted by the Bismarck, but it was still a fantastic ship.  It just got outgunned is all.  Plus, battlecruisers aren’t supposed to match up against battleships anyway.

Well, the Hood was a special case.  A more representative British CB would be the Renown class.  The Hood was actually armored almost up to battleship standards and was, in fact, larger than any BB built until the building of the Bismark… but the standards for deck armor had changed based on changes in gunnery tech and research between the wars.  She was actually, rather ironically, scheduled to be up-armored  but never quite got it in time… Though some still argue about whether it really was a deck-armoring design-flaw or a lucky shot… or even whether it was a fire cause by hits from the Prinz Eugen.  Historians also still argue about whether the Hood should really have been classed as a BC or as a fast BB.  It seems that just about everything about the Hood ended up being rather controversial!

[Imperious Leader]

BC didn’t have the same firepower as BB. These were stronger than cruisers but still having lower caliber guns. If they carried larger guns they would need more weight and become larger and lose speed.

Their defense was their speed because armor plating was poor due again to the need to keep the ship lighter so it can catch or out run Cruisers or Battleships.

ships should not goto 3 hits and 2 hits. Its not KISS.

If you don’t give the BC a special ability like a speed bonus, the advantage of adding another warship is not adding anything to the game. If anything the only new warship should be escort/jeep/light carriers.

People barely buy cruisers as it is, to have a one hit 4-4- unit or 2 hit 3-3 unit is really like just cutting a pie into more slices. Your not really creating anything new and not adding more to the game

[Tigerman77]

@Imperious:

BC didn’t have the same firepower as BB. These were stronger than cruisers but still having lower caliber guns. If they carried larger guns they would need more weight and become larger and lose speed.

Their defense was their speed because armor plating was poor due again to the need to keep the ship lighter so it can catch or out run Cruisers or Battleships.

ships should not goto 3 hits and 2 hits. Its not KISS.

If you don’t give the BC a special ability like a speed bonus, the advantage of adding another warship is not adding anything to the game. If anything the only new warship should be escort/jeep/light carriers.

People barely buy cruisers as it is, to have a one hit 4-4- unit or 2 hit 3-3 unit is really like just cutting a pie into more slices. Your not really creating anything new and not adding more to the game

What does a Tank Destroyer or an armored car really add to the game? Nothing except its a new piece that can be used as a tank or have special abilities as a tank destroyer. I think the Navies of the game need a CVL, BC, and Destroyer escorts. These 3 units would really open up the the variant games with new and different rules for naval combat.and tactics.

[Imperious Leader]

What does a Tank Destroyer or an armored car really add to the game? Nothing except its a new piece that can be used as a tank or have special abilities as a tank destroyer. I think the Navies of the game need a CVL, BC, and Destroyer escorts. These 3 units would really open up the the variant games with new and different rules for naval combat.and tactics.

it wont add anything UNLESS LIKE BATTLE-CRUISERS, it has a special ability.

Adding all these pieces and “fitting” in marginal changes in the values and not giving them anything special makes them nothing to the game. If they have a special ability, THEN THEY HAVE A VALUE.  BECAUSE RIGHT NOW ALL THE COMBAT VALUES ARE TAKEN.

We got 2-1, 2-2,3-3,4-4 units. adding 4-3 or 3-2 or whatever is not really adding a new idea to the game. Thats why in order to make a new units you MUST ADD SPECIAL ABILITY.

SO the BC should be a 3 space mover or possibly “blitz” sea zones with carriers at 3 spaces like tanks blitz on land with mech.

[DrLarsen]

@Imperious:

BC didn’t have the same firepower as BB. These were stronger than cruisers but still having lower caliber guns. If they carried larger guns they would need more weight and become larger and lose speed. Their defense was their speed because armor plating was poor due again to the need to keep the ship lighter so it can catch or out run Cruisers or Battleships.

That’s sort of the theory, but the reality wasn’t that simple.  If you compare the very first Dreadnought BB (the Dreadnought) and the Invincible, the first CB (or really CC was the proper US abbreviation back then) it had the same main armament, but the BB had more armor and the CC was longer (because length/width ratio was VITAL to speed) and much more powerful machinery.  The Germans tended to go 1 step down (like 1", no more) in armament but theirs were better armored.  The Renowns and the Hood had 15" guns: hardly lesser firepower, considering that many navies of the time hadn’t yet gotten beyond 13.5" or 14" guns, and no one would go over 16" for another 15 years (and then the Yamato’s with their 18"-ers would be unique.)  So they did sacrifice armor, but not much in the way of firepower.

Later CB’s would be a little lighter in armament, like the Alaska’s and the never-built Japanese B65 or Soviet Kronstadt.  Even the Gneisenau with its 11" guns was still in the Dreadnought BB range: the original German dreadnoughts carried 11" guns.  They were much more heavily armored than the US CB’s, though, and the Germans always referred to them as BB’s.  They’d actually planned to rearm them with 6x15", which would have made them an interesting match-up with the Renowns… and the follow-on O-Class, which might have been even lighter armored and WERE seen as “true CC’s,” would have also been 6x15"  But anyway, anything that I know of that has ever been called a “battlecruiser” was within the 11"-16" gun range… while everything I know of in the dreadnought battleship range was… 11"-18" range.  Hardly a major difference!

A key point here, though, is that the weight of armament was not the main thing that hurt speed, but the weight of armor, especially since the length to weight ratio was so key: putting the same armor over a longer hull would always mean a heavier ship, to the speed/armor trade-off was kind of a catch-22!  Sometimes, but not always, designers played around at the margins of extra weight by reducing the # of guns a little bit or reducing their caliber a little bit, but a BC was always much closer to a BB than to a CA in armament.  This is why the Washington Treaty grouped BC’s and BB’s together as “capital ships” and then set a strict limit of 8" guns and 10,000 tons for cruisers, to make sure the “cruiser” and “capital ship” categories didn’t merge together and make the treaty irrelevant before it expired.

If you don’t give the BC a special ability like a speed bonus, the advantage of adding another warship is not adding anything to the game. If anything the only new warship should be escort/jeep/light carriers.

People barely buy cruisers as it is, to have a one hit 4-4- unit or 2 hit 3-3 unit is really like just cutting a pie into more slices. Your not really creating anything new and not adding more to the game

Here you have a point, IL, ASSUMING a d6 system, since the d12 system gives more gradiants.  But if you give BC’s and CV’s a speed advantage, then that same speed advantage should also go to cruisers and DD destroyers (though maybe not to DE destroyers if they’re added)  …and maybe also to fast BB’s.  (The Iowa’s were as fast as any BC!)  And on a larger map, like the Golbal 1939 one, perhaps such a speed advantage would be a helpful game-pace improvement, though not having played it yet, I can’t say what it would do to the game-balance issue.

[Imperious Leader]

That’s sort of the theory, but the reality wasn’t that simple.  If you compare the very first Dreadnought BB (the Dreadnought) and the Invincible, the first CB (or really CC was the proper US abbreviation back then) it had the same main armament, but the BB had more armor and the CC was longer (because length/width ratio was VITAL to speed) and much more powerful machinery.  The Germans tended to go 1 step down (like 1", no more) in armament but theirs were better armored.  The Renowns and the Hood had 15" guns: hardly lesser firepower, considering that many navies of the time hadn’t yet gotten beyond 13.5" or 14" guns, and no one would go over 16" for another 15 years (and then the Yamato’s with their 18"-ers would be unique.)  So they did sacrifice armor, but not much in the way of firepower.

The examples you use are only the cases where the BC had larger guns. The standard BC had smaller guns because larger would cause more weight and the concept was to have something that could run as fast as a cruiser, but outrun and out gun them.

most of these are 11-14 inch range, while battleships 15-16+ size range

Scharnhorst & Gneisenau
Alaska class
Dunkerque class
And it can be argued that some German pocket battleships were really Battlecruisers
Kongo class

The difference is very great in terms of armor piercing ability of having a 15 inch gun vs say a 12 or 14 inch.

I guess a 4-4 unit with one hit capability and moves 3 in NCM is enough distance in this unit to make it viable to include it in the game, but the price would need to be about 14-15 range. not more

[DrLarsen]

@Imperious:

The examples you use are only the cases where the BC had larger guns. The standard BC had smaller guns because larger would cause more weight and the concept was to have something that could run as fast as a cruiser, but outrun and out gun them.

most of these are 11-14 inch range, while battleships 15-16+ size range

Scharnhorst & Gneisenau
Alaska class
Dunkerque class
And it can be argued that some German pocket battleships were really Battlecruisers
Kongo class

The difference is very great in terms of armor piercing ability of having a 15 inch gun vs say a 12 or 14 inch.

I guess a 4-4 unit with one hit capability and moves 3 in NCM is enough distance in this unit to make it viable to include it in the game, but the price would need to be about 14-15 range. not more

My examples are not un-representative within a given “design generation.”  If there’s more than an incremental difference between the average BB and the average BC, it likely has as much to do with the fact that BC’s fell out of favor, and so the newer and larger-gunned BB’s didn’t have BC equivalents most of the time.
-The Kongo’s had 14" guns, as large as they got when she was laid down (The British had only just started thinking about moving to 15" at that point.) 
-The Dunkerque’s (13") were only slightly smaller than average and the previous French design had only had 13.4" guns.  Even so, the French didn’t actually refer to them as BC’s, but rather as “Fast BB’s.”
-The German pocket BB’s were cruiser-sized because of the Versailles Treaty and only carried 6 11" guns, and so are a special case.

-The US Alaska’s are really the only ones built to a noticeably smaller gun type than BB’s of the same generation, and even she has guns that are the same size as the original dreadnought BB and are MUCH bigger than the 8" guns of a heavy cruiser.  Even they are a special case, as the USN never called them “battlecruisers” (which they always abbreviated “CC”) but rather “large cruiser” (which they abbreviated CB) partly, I suppose, because the whole “battlecruiser concept” had become rather controversial in the wake of Jutland and the Hood debacle.

Yes, there’s a big range in capital ships guns, but if you really compare BC’s and BB’s of the same design generation, the difference in main armament is always incremental, if there’s a difference at all, and often there wasn’t! Yes, there’s a big difference in power between 12" and 16" guns, but there’s a bigger difference between 12" guns and 8" cruiser guns!

[Tigerman77]

I’m not arguing about how to use the pieces! I’m arguing the fact that if made available there could be house rules made to fit the units in the game….global or tactical game…any game! IMHO, I think the 3 naval units I mentioned before could add to a game, obviously not as historic as adding the mechs and tacs!! Since we have 2 people willing to make pieces I think it would be good to expand unit catagories as much as possible. Just sayin!

[Imperious Leader]

Fast Battleships really ended the value of the BC. They got the same speed and also had larger guns and better plating.

But the battlecruiser also had a more efficient range that it could operate making them suited for commerce raiding and patrolling. Battleships sucked fuel and needed close bases to operate from.

The Battlecuiser should have the increased range which translates into ‘speed’

[DrLarsen]

@Tigerman77:

I’m not arguing about how to use the pieces! I’m arguing the fact that if made available there could be house rules made to fit the units in the game….global or tactical game…any game! IMHO, I think the 3 naval units I mentioned before could add to a game, obviously not as historic as adding the mechs and tacs!! Since we have 2 people willing to make pieces I think it would be good to expand unit catagories as much as possible. Just sayin!

Well, I do agree on this much… I think that perhaps that, for example, an Alaska, which really is roughly a half-step between, say, and Iowa and a Baltimore-class cruiser, would be a great 7-7 unit on a d12 system.  As to whether it gets 1 hit or 2, I’m thinking that whatever a carrier gets, it would be about the same: not as tough as a battleship, but definitely a step above a cruiser, and probably closer to a BB than to a CA.  Probably this means that if you go to a 3-hit BB, or a 1 hit CV, the armor difference between a BB and a BC could be represented, but if both the CV and the BB stay 2-hit units, then a BC would be there too.

Fast Battleships really ended the value of the BC. They got the same speed and also had larger guns and better plating.

Yeah, that’s basically the size of it.

But the battlecruiser also had a more efficient range that it could operate making them suited for commerce raiding and patrolling. Battleships sucked fuel and needed close bases to operate from.

The Battlecuiser should have the increased range which translates into ‘speed’

Well, that’s a point.  What we’re really dealing with here is actually “strategic” speed rather than “tactical” speed, given the game’s overall scale, which is why we probably can’t represent the difference between fast tanks and slow ones on this scale.  In efficiency, though, I’m not sure that this works so well as a differentiator between BB’s and BC’s.  I think it actually probably works better on an “old” vs. “new” basis.  For example, I was just reading up on the battle of Guadalcanal the other month (awesome book btw, titled Neptune’s Inferno any of y’all who are really interested in getting into the nuts and bolts of the Pacific War, that guy’s an awesome writer, I couldn’t put it down…) but anyway, the author answered a Q I’d long had: “Why didn’t the US use some of its old BB’s in the Guadalcanal Campaign?”  The answer seems to be this very effciency issue you raised: the US didn’t yet have the oiler fleet to keep the old BB’s supplied that far from base.

Interestingly, though, the new BB’s just coming on line were much more efficient, which is why the Washington and SD were on-hand to finally be sent into the fray in the decisive 2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal!

Given this, I’d say it makes more sense to give the movement range of 3 to all the new BB’s, BC’s, CV’s/ CVL’s, CA’s/CL’s & DD’s, but not to the old BB’s subs, transports, DE’s, and CVE’s (if we have them).

[Pvt.Ryan]

Hey guys I’m making a house rule where naval bases and airbases are used for doing things like refueling units. I need to know the cruising speed and distance for all the current naval units and maybe the ones your thinking about making. I might even edit how far a unit can move.

[Tigerman77]

Ryan,

best way to do that would be to incorporate supply tokens into the game. They cost 2 IPC and they are transported by truck and transport. If your fleet is out to sea it needs a transport carrying supplies sailing with it….like an oiler. Technically ships can stay out to sea indefinetly as long as they have food and fuel and ammo!!!