Battleship or Battle-Cruiser ?

[Lonesomepoet]

I'm debating whether its better to have fewer BB with more power ( duh ) but at higher cost or more BC at the expense of power for a cheaper price . Ships aint exactly cheap and its not like money grows on trees so I'm looking for opinions on how ya'll build your fleets

[venular27114]

it depends on the country your playing as for example USA dreadnoughts 1-3 (idk its been a while since ive played them) suck but when i did play as them i had a bunch bc that went were extremely successful but typicaly i dont build bc late game once i get modern bbs

edit: its like comparing a cl to ca they both serve different roles

[nzgunner]

Playing as Italy I fell in love with BCs once they became available

28+ knots, 14" calibre, accurate and fast loading guns - I own the Med (especially after capturing Gibraltar)

[Lucky]

In general BBs have better resistance and spotting range, late game ones are capable of mounting guns over 18 inches.

In practice, BBs serve no purpose. AI is unable to systematicaly produce designs capable of long range fight so you only really need to build BCs.

[ohthot1227]

Is BC even cheaper? I mean, the price of engines take up a LOT of a ship's cost.
And thus sometimes a 27knot BC can be more expensive then a 21 knot BB.

[Oscar von BJ]

XD you gave yourself an answer already XD, if money is good , fully BB affordable then fully BB, otherwise BB+BC will work to save your credit card of 3 penny

[Lucky]

Originally posted by ohthot1227:

Is BC even cheaper? I mean, the price of engines take up a LOT of a ship's cost.
And thus sometimes a 27knot BC can be more expensive then a 21 knot BB.

BC is cheaper for the same speed and for the same money you will get the same armor/guns but at higher speed.

[ohthot1227]

Originally posted by Lucky:

BC is cheaper for the same speed

I mean of course, But If you are gonna build a battlecruiser the same speed with a battleship why the f would you even build or call it a BC?
It's just a BB with thin armor.

The purpose of BC IS trading speed with armor/firepower...so they can hunt down enemy cruisers
All BCs were at least 25~27 knots historically

[Lucky]

Who said thin armor? In UAD, BC can out-armor BBs.

[BoredViking]

Considering
You can build an accurate BC to shoot as 10km+;
The game imposes no penalty on 2nd hand spotting (ie. shooting a ship that is in the visual range of another ship - but not the shooter)

A sharp shooter BC with a spotting DD is the most cost effective weapons system, until radar.

You keep BC in a steady, cruise speed course, beyond visual range, and navigate the DD to get the spot. just keep the DD in constant, erratic maneuver.

[SentosKarum]

I'd disagree calling BC cheaper. Between the higher speeds and usually smaller guns but more tech-up ones (ie. Auto-Reload II instead of Semi Auto) my BC tend to run almost as expensive as my BB.

My BC tend to max out at quad 14inchers (no quad 13incher in the game for some reason) and run incendiary shells. They are very good at burning down things.
But usually I use them to naval invade colonies while using my BB to block the mainland.

The real reason you do good BC designs is so minor nations order them.

[DUKT!]

It's a good question. As someone already mentioned it depends on which country you play. Usually play the Brits and Germans myself. Brits are heavy with 25 DN's and maybe 5 BC's. As they have the speed but the armor protection really gets noticed in battle. The Germans are the opposite I've found. Once you get to BC level II they tend to be more like fast battleships. I've had German BC's have 28-30 knots speed, better armour protection than my BB's and triple turrets. So it really depends on the country you are playing, but has a bit to do with perception of the DEV's too. As it seems the Brits and Germans are stereotyped towards their ship designs based on their historical counterparts. The Lutzow class of BC's in real life were more like fast BB's rather than BC's.

[sandman2575]

Originally posted by Lucky:

In practice, BBs serve no purpose. AI is unable to systematicaly produce designs capable of long range fight so you only really need to build BCs.

Re: BBs serving no purpose -- should also mention that getting your biggest capital ships actually INTO combat is much harder than it should be, thanks to the game's idiotic algorithm for assigning ships to combat based on tonnage. You're in effect penalized for building big, heavy ships... penalized in the sense that you spend all that time designing a BB and you'll be lucky if you actually get to USE it in combat...

[Lucky]

You are lucky. Because if you are to actually put that resistance stat to good use you will find out how long it takes to repair even lightly damaged superbattleship,

[Brummbær]

Originally posted by Lucky:

Originally posted by ohthot1227:

Is BC even cheaper? I mean, the price of engines take up a LOT of a ship's cost.
And thus sometimes a 27knot BC can be more expensive then a 21 knot BB.

BC is cheaper for the same speed and for the same money you will get the same armor/guns but at higher speed.

They are cheaper, because normally they are lighter but if you build a BB and a BC to exact the same weight they will cost the same. A small difference might come from the space available for secondaries but basically a BC is nothing else but a lighter armored and arned BB.

[Wyrm]

I tend to combine BC with only destroyers since the early ones are often faster than even my light cruisers. Then I have battle-fleets with BB and CA screened by mostly light cruisers and a few destroyers.

If only the game would give us more control over what happen with our fleets I could use BC for raiding and hunting cruisers while my BB-fleets cover convoys and slug it out with the enemy main fleets.