Battle cruisers

[ropestring3]

are they good?

[Shade-O]

Nope
Battleships and carriers reign surpreme on the sea.

[ropestring3]

Originally posted by Shade-O:

Nope
Battleships and carriers reign surpreme on the sea.

I checked the stats for the german 1940 battle cruiser and 1940 battlehsip, and production taken into account they looked pretty even

[Shade-O]

Originally posted by bobbyandassociate:

Originally posted by Shade-O:

Nope
Battleships and carriers reign surpreme on the sea.

I checked the stats for the german 1940 battle cruiser and 1940 battlehsip, and production taken into account they looked pretty even

The explaination is somehwat complex to but to put it simply. Battlships have higher armor and if the ships cannot pierce it then it will deal 90% reduced damage. As a result a fleet with only battleship vs a fleet with only battlecruisers will be a one-sided victory for the battleships since battleships will barely receive any damage despite being somewhat similar in stats.

[ropestring3]

I believe piercing is not 90% reduction, but gradual. Could you point me towards a source for the 90% number?

[Shade-O]

I don't exactly have a first-hand source but i watched this YT video which does an excellent job testing out the naval battles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3BekaAaO4

[ropestring3]

Originally posted by Shade-O:

I don't exactly have a first-hand source but i watched this YT video which does an excellent job testing out the naval battles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3BekaAaO4

I watched the video too and was just confused about it. In the description It says that piercing is gradual, so i thought heavy cruisers might be efficient enough to operate while my super heavies or normal battle ships repaired. I think I'll just do battle ship spam and cruisers.

[Shade-O]

In one of his tests battlecruisers lost to battleahip of equal production.
Hence it was concluded from the video that battleships, h.battleships and carriers are ruling the seas.
Mixing any other units is considered a waste besides being meatshields.

[andersrlarsen]

i want to point out 2 things:
- those players who claim that all other ships than BB and carriers are garbage, are also those who complain the most of broken naval mechanism.
- those players who claim that only BB and carriers are worth building, are players who cannot protect their transports.

since you have taken the bother to check stats, i hope that you also noticed one of the biggest differences between BB and BC. -SPEED-

the thing about BB is that they are very strong, both in armor (which makes them hard to sink) and guns (which make them deal more damage). BUT, they are also incredibly slow...
because of the slow speed, they will take a long time to even enter the battlescreen, which make the other ships in that fleet to wait for them instead of possitioning in the battle. once the BB have finally entered the battlescreen, they will take a long time to get close enough to actually start attacking the enemy fleet. durin this time, they will also slow down the other ships in their fleet, which means that they wont reach the battle earlier either. instead they will be sitting ducks for enemy planes in both these phases.
during this time, the enemy will have had time to sink all your transports, and even get away from battle. (this is when players open a chat, and complain about how trash the mechanism are since ships will just be sitting and whatching their 24 division get killed)

a BC are much faster, and will use much less time to both enter the battlescreen and to reach into fighting possition as well. the ships will enter combat much earlier, and will therefore deal more total damage than the battleships would in the same amount of time. they will attack the enemy fleet, and therefore draw away fire on transports, allowing the transports to get away instead.
also, since fleets without BB are much faster than fleets with BB, these fleets are great to hunt damaged enemy fleets.
of course, if there are BB in the fleet, also BC will be slown down, and become sitting ducks as well.


about the youtube-video; many people claim this to be the "ultimate proof" of why BB and carriers are the only thing usefull, i would point out that it is very poorly done, and are in my opinion just garbage since he never attempt using cruiser fleets or other scenarios (including escort duty).
now you can decide to listen to these guys, and then start complaining about ships not protecting transports, or you can try out these missing scenarios yourself...

PS! if you decide to try for yourself, i would suggest to try out cruiser fleets, with 1 BC, 2 HC, 6 LC and 6 DD. also add 1 carrier if you have the production and research to build them and carrier naval bomber.

Note...there may be many things that might change when MtG is released.

[KriegerKR]

Originally posted by andersrlarsen:

i want to point out 2 things:
- those players who claim that all other ships than BB and carriers are garbage, are also those who complain the most of broken naval mechanism.
- those players who claim that only BB and carriers are worth building, are players who cannot protect their transports.

since you have taken the bother to check stats, i hope that you also noticed one of the biggest differences between BB and BC. -SPEED-

the thing about BB is that they are very strong, both in armor (which makes them hard to sink) and guns (which make them deal more damage). BUT, they are also incredibly slow...
because of the slow speed, they will take a long time to even enter the battlescreen, which make the other ships in that fleet to wait for them instead of possitioning in the battle. once the BB have finally entered the battlescreen, they will take a long time to get close enough to actually start attacking the enemy fleet. durin this time, they will also slow down the other ships in their fleet, which means that they wont reach the battle earlier either. instead they will be sitting ducks for enemy planes in both these phases.
during this time, the enemy will have had time to sink all your transports, and even get away from battle. (this is when players open a chat, and complain about how trash the mechanism are since ships will just be sitting and whatching their 24 division get killed)

a BC are much faster, and will use much less time to both enter the battlescreen and to reach into fighting possition as well. the ships will enter combat much earlier, and will therefore deal more total damage than the battleships would in the same amount of time. they will attack the enemy fleet, and therefore draw away fire on transports, allowing the transports to get away instead.
also, since fleets without BB are much faster than fleets with BB, these fleets are great to hunt damaged enemy fleets.
of course, if there are BB in the fleet, also BC will be slown down, and become sitting ducks as well.


about the youtube-video; many people claim this to be the "ultimate proof" of why BB and carriers are the only thing usefull, i would point out that it is very poorly done, and are in my opinion just garbage since he never attempt using cruiser fleets or other scenarios (including escort duty).
now you can decide to listen to these guys, and then start complaining about ships not protecting transports, or you can try out these missing scenarios yourself...

PS! if you decide to try for yourself, i would suggest to try out cruiser fleets, with 1 BC, 2 HC, 6 LC and 6 DD. also add 1 carrier if you have the production and research to build them and carrier naval bomber.

Note...there may be many things that might change when MtG is released.

I only build battleships and destroyers, and my fleets protect my transports just fine. Carriers aren't worth it unless you're in the Pacific in my opinion. Battleship destroyer fleet OP.

[ropestring3]

Originally posted by andersrlarsen:

i want to point out 2 things:
- those players who claim that all other ships than BB and carriers are garbage, are also those who complain the most of broken naval mechanism.
- those players who claim that only BB and carriers are worth building, are players who cannot protect their transports.

since you have taken the bother to check stats, i hope that you also noticed one of the biggest differences between BB and BC. -SPEED-

the thing about BB is that they are very strong, both in armor (which makes them hard to sink) and guns (which make them deal more damage). BUT, they are also incredibly slow...
because of the slow speed, they will take a long time to even enter the battlescreen, which make the other ships in that fleet to wait for them instead of possitioning in the battle. once the BB have finally entered the battlescreen, they will take a long time to get close enough to actually start attacking the enemy fleet. durin this time, they will also slow down the other ships in their fleet, which means that they wont reach the battle earlier either. instead they will be sitting ducks for enemy planes in both these phases.
during this time, the enemy will have had time to sink all your transports, and even get away from battle. (this is when players open a chat, and complain about how trash the mechanism are since ships will just be sitting and whatching their 24 division get killed)

a BC are much faster, and will use much less time to both enter the battlescreen and to reach into fighting possition as well. the ships will enter combat much earlier, and will therefore deal more total damage than the battleships would in the same amount of time. they will attack the enemy fleet, and therefore draw away fire on transports, allowing the transports to get away instead.
also, since fleets without BB are much faster than fleets with BB, these fleets are great to hunt damaged enemy fleets.
of course, if there are BB in the fleet, also BC will be slown down, and become sitting ducks as well.


about the youtube-video; many people claim this to be the "ultimate proof" of why BB and carriers are the only thing usefull, i would point out that it is very poorly done, and are in my opinion just garbage since he never attempt using cruiser fleets or other scenarios (including escort duty).
now you can decide to listen to these guys, and then start complaining about ships not protecting transports, or you can try out these missing scenarios yourself...

PS! if you decide to try for yourself, i would suggest to try out cruiser fleets, with 1 BC, 2 HC, 6 LC and 6 DD. also add 1 carrier if you have the production and research to build them and carrier naval bomber.

Note...there may be many things that might change when MtG is released.

thanks for the suggestion. I didn't pay attention to any flaws in the testing, but i did notice a few things:
1) the subs against the battle ships couldn't finish it, but also were never finished. Maybe land based naval bombers would make the difference in finsihing off
1b) the subs might be raiding convoys, in which case the battle ships running off would mean victory for the subs;
2) He did not take into consideration repair time (might be worth making some smaller ships to be active while other ships repair)

[ropestring3]

Okay I checked sppeds and difference about 4. How much does that matter when the sppeds are about 30?

[Lollibast]

Originally posted by andersrlarsen:

also, since fleets without BB are much faster than fleets with BB, these fleets are great to hunt damaged enemy fleets.

sounds good in theory but how do you do that ingame? in my experience you can not hunt down enemy fleets because of the sudden battle endings, one of the more annoying bugs.

I could not even manage to kill a lone BB1, it would just disengage every time. in theory, due to it being so slow, it should not be able to disengage at all. *praying for MtG*

[Ëvïlnïck8 ゴゴゴ]

againts AI I would say go for it, battlecruisers have an advantage were it reqeuires less research slots to get the 1940 model. And againts the AI you should not realy spend to much research time into naval stuff since the AI is pretty bad with it so a fleet of 5-6 battleships or battlecruisers can do some serieus damage already.

[andersrlarsen]

im not going to attempt trying to explain the mechanism in the naval battle, partly because it is difficult to explain, and partly because i dont understand everything myself either.
but it does work.....and if you try it out, you can see if it works yourself...

best way to test this is by playing france, and switch to fascist or communism, then attack uk. france start with BC2 (1940) tech already researched, and are in good position to test naval stuff with. if you startby building docks from start, you can easily get alot of ships with 30+ speed.

BC2 has a speed of 32. but if you use xp, you can enhance the engine to get speed of 37.
BB4 (1944) can in comparison reach a max speed of 34,5 (but recuire more research, and will be much later in game). the production cost will allow you to build 50% more BC than BB, you also need less resources to build. as an example; you can build 2 BB4 or 3 BC2 with same amount of docks, while using only 60% resources on the 3 BC2 vs 2 BB4. the BB4 will be a stronger ship, but not so much better than BC2 that it deserve that much more production cost.

also remember that a fleet is only as fast as your slowest ship (which is why you should never have subs in your fleets), and ships will often wait for more ships from the fleet to reach the battle before engaging the enemy.
small cruiser fleets work much better in hunting damadged ships. even if the enemy disengage, they wont be able to run away from faster fleets unless your fleet is waiting for ships to arrive.