@mantlefan:
OK. How common are those situations? When Japan or US in the pac are wiped out? When Germany is ready to land on Leningrad after the Russians have already abandoned it?
I agree. Not common. Why didn’t you quote the part where I said cruisers have a limited niche?
The only power that I get good use out of cruisers with is Italy, and that’s because they start out with them.
Yes, and they’re really nice units, aren’t they?
Saying they are good in situation A doesn’t make them good on a relevant scale when situation A comes about mostly after any use of situation A coming about has any real effect on the game.
I think I almost know what you’re trying to say here, but it’s just not quite making sense… I think you need better sentence structure.
I don’t see why telling people not to buy them if they don’t like them is helpful with a discussion of them being good buys or not.
Wasn’t trying to help with that comment, you’re right. That’s just evidence of a little frustration of this same old topic coming up again and again. My point is, what is the point of dissing cruisers? Just don’t buy them! Everybody knows destroyers are more efficient and generally more effective in the more common air and naval defense, and naval attack, and sub blocking, and sub destroying. But that doesn’t mean destroyers are always the best buy over cruisers. Always is a strong word. That’s my only point. I rarely buy cruisers, because I like to win. :-)
However, there are things to consider between the differences between cruisers and destroyers. I’ve listed several before, but here’s one I don’t usually cite. If you don’t have a destroyer, then you can’t hit enemy subs with air power. This can be a really good strategy, to not take destroyers into a naval battle if the enemy has a bunch of subs and surface ships, and you have a bunch of air power.
Example:
You have 5 fighters and 5 bombers, 5 subs, and either 5 destroyers or 3 cruisers.
You are looking to attack 8 subs, 3 destroyers, 2 carriers, and 4 fighters.
If you have the cruisers instead of the destroyers, then in the first round all of your air hits must be applied to non-subs. Subs defend on a 1 and are cheap, so you don’t want your air hits applied to them. His sub hits (one or 2 probably) can be applied to your subs. So you see, in this type of battle (not terribly uncommon) cruisers would be better to have then destroyers.
There are so many situations and differences between destroyers and cruisers and subs, that you shouldn’t just come up with some magical formula like “never buy cruisers”.
And I still stand by my point that when there isn’t an air or naval threat on your fleet, and no fleet in range to attack that destroyers and subs are at that time completely worthless. But cruisers may be used to bombard. It’s a little like when you have bombers. When there are no good conventional military targets to attack, your bombers can go Strat bomb raid. Your fighters can do nothing but sit there and look pretty. So cruisers do have applications when they are not defending your fleet or attacking another fleet - they can bombard, and for the cost they pack the most power for bombardment.
In various cruiser discussions that keep popping up (because the number crunchers keep looking at 8 IPC vs. 12 IPC and 2A2D vs 3A3D and saying therefore, that destroyers are vastly superior) I don’t know how many different reasons and examples I’ve come up with for why cruisers can be better than destroyers, but it’s quite a few. But if you don’t understand these reasons or are stubborn about your brilliant math involving 8 vs 12 and 2 vs 3, then it’s your loss, and I am just saying fine, never buy cruisers, you know?
