Old school light cruisers seem to work better than the modern ones in the 1920's.

[leyvarin]

I tried building both, got a really cool, deadly looking 1920's Italian light cruiser built, it had good stats, and was well armed and all the numbers were right, but took it out 2 to 1 against British heavy cruisers, drew heavy cruisers with 10 inch guns and got smoked. I hit rebuild ship because I'd obviously done something wrong and the old scraggy, ugly duckling light cruiser hull came up, so I built the best one I could with the heaviest guns that i could fit on it, and restarted the battle. Lo and behold, same British 10 inch heavy cruisers but this time the outcome was very different. I got chewed up a bit but only lost 1 ship and the heavy cruisers went to Davy Jones. It really helped that my torpedoes weren't duds. I have lost battles due to constant dud torpedoes. I don't know if any of the rest of you have had that problem. Well, you know how the old song goes: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife, so from a personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you!". Looks aren't everything. :)

[DropShot]

Size matters. Sometimes a smaller frame makes all the difference. Given secondary guns are nearly worthless outside of 3~km, and your armor-less ship will die if they get in that range... it's pretty much worthless to make your CLs any bigger than you need for enough main guns and torps.

Same can be said for a lot of hulls rn, actually.

[leyvarin]

Funny how in WW2 in general light cruisers were pretty durable, even the older ones. Light cruisers got into some vicous battles. The story of U.S.S. Boise, and the tale of U.S.S. Marblehead's escape from the Japanese held Pacific islands, taking hit after hit from Japanese planes and then making a trip half way around the World with significant damage only to pull into New York harbor 6 months later, get repaired and put right back on duty, man that kind of stuff amazes me. Then there's the battle of the Komandorski islands, again an Omaha class cruiser getting three hits on a Japanese heavy cruiser without getting a scratch. Man light cruisers were fighting machines!

[Lucky]

Scout cruiser takes 50% more damage. And since you clearly rushed in for the torpedo attack this makes all the difference.

Scout cruiser is... I don't know how to put it... for scouting. And you need a torpedo ram. What is not scouting.