Carriers/battlecarriers

First of all, I am not against having carriers or battlecarriers around, I just think that weeding out the battleships, battlecruisers, and cruisers in favor of them is a less desireable situation. I, personally, feel that carriers and battlecarriers should be kept to a minimum, even though I understand that the reason behind them is to keep everyone and their dog from captianing a battleship in multiplayer.

The battlecarrier seems to me to be a terrible concept. Due to the online nature of this war, and not "real steel," may prove this to be slightly untrue, it seems to me that the battlecarrier is, at best, a serious waste of those big guns. If a ship carries at least one squadron, or possibly even as little as half a squadron, the aircraft would be the main striking force of that ship. There's really no other way to look at that. Aircraft have longer range than the big guns, especially if the big guns can't traverse high enough for best possible arch due to a flight deck being in the way. Aircraft can also put more ordinance on a target more accurately than a deck gun can. The only advantage a deck gun would have over aircraft is fire rate, due to rearm times for the planes. If you add to this the fact that, should a battlecarrier lose every single plane it carries, the cost in both materials, construction time, and replacement personnel to recover the losses is still dramatically less than the cost for replacing one battlecarrier, or even a ship as small as a cruiser. Possibly even destroyers would be more expensive overall than a squadron or two of carrier aircraft. This cost difference is even greater when you take into account the fact that if you lose the battlecarrier, you are almost certian to lose the aircraft as well, since they will have nowhere to land. (If you're close enough to land bases to have the aircraft go there, you're not using the battlecarrier in the first place, because from land bases you can get more, larger aircraft to the target)

Put these points together, and you're left with the large guns on the battlecarriers becoming almost totally useless. Flight operations require a carrier to be heading into the wind and holding a straight course. Heading in that predictable of a course would be suicide in any naval engagement, and at the very least would make bringing the deck guns to bear on the target a matter of luck and prior planning of the battle, since you'd have to start the engagement on the correct side of the target to fire while performing flight ops. Of course, your rate of fire would have to go way down, since firing the guns would cause the ship to roll with the recoil, throwing flight ops off until the ship regained stability. Plus, aircraft would require more distance than the range of the deck guns allow to get to altitude and speed to make their attacks the safest and most efficient way possible, making the point about bringing deck guns to bear while conducting flight ops completely moot.

Therefore, it is my personal conclusion that battlecarriers are, at best, a severely limited tactical tool, who's only true use is shore bombardment, where both aircraft and deck guns can be used effectively, albeit still taking into account the limitations already mentioned. I, for one, would never want to captian one for the same reason I wouldn't want to captian a carrier. They would both be boring beyond belief, as essentially all you have to do is keep yourself out of range of the enemy fleet's deck guns, make life as easy as possible for your launching and landing aircraft, and zig zag to avoid enemy aircraft attacks. (Assuming no one uses the suicide dive bombing that plagues games like Aces High)

Now you're all probably wondering what the suggestion here is...as am I. I understand the need to keep battleships and the like to a minimum number in multiplayer, but I think that, to keep this from becoming a flight sim with really good naval graphics, a possibly better solution would be something economic, i.e. the world powers would rather spend the time and resources producing many smaller ships instead of a few large ones. But, I suppose only time will tell if my tactical analysis of battlecarriers and the real world proven tactics of carriers will prove true in the different world we live in.

Your thoughts are more or less the same thoughts ship designers and navy personnel had in reality and why the battlecarrier concept never really left the drawing boards before 1945 (except for some strange ships like the Swedish cruiser GOTLAND).

In reality the heavy guns were easily outranged by dive bomber planes, and planes had a far better chance to hit than heavy gunfire - the fact that led to the end of the battleship era.

The battlecarrier concept only works when carrier based aircraft and the battlecarrier's weapons have similar ranges. This actually occured only once in reality: The Soviet KIEV class Hybrid Carrier/Cruiser of the 70ies, which carried some YAK - 36 Forger V/STOL planes and an armament composed of long range anti air and anti ship missiles as well as small calibre guns and quite an impressive array of anti sub weapons. The KIEV Class is in my opinion the class that comes closest to the concept of battlecarriers in reality.

E:RT is not reality, but the problems remain. A battlecarrier will always be outgunned by a battleship or a battlecruiser, probably even by a heavy cruiser or a pocket battleship (if they happen to be in E:RT). In order to stand a chance against a BC or a BB the battlecarrier must stay out of range of the enemy's main guns and strike from above - but this means to stay out of range of it's own guns as well.

Fighting an enemy carrier on the other hand means: getting close and gunning the carrier down. However, a battlecarrier will have a very hard time to get close, as it has to fight the carrier's air group, which is nearly impossible, as a pure carrier will have far more planes available. I'd say that a battlecarrier wouldn't have any chance at all against a pure carrier.

So this leaves the question: Why the big guns? You don't want to get in range when fighting a battleship and you won't be able to get in range when fighting a carrier. Fighting smaller ships is something a pure battleship or a pure carrier would be much better at, this goes as well for shore bombardment.

I think that battlecarriers will only see a short time of action. Bismarck and Tirpitz conversions took some 12 months (according to the pics at the end of E:RT Singleplayer), which is by far not enough time to change a nearly finished battleship into a carrier. I don't see how battlecarriers can be more than a interim solution until the pure fleet carriers are ready - but until then they'll be the only carriers available.

Great discussion guys - keep it coming!

/bux

Excellent points, guys, and well written. The only question I may have is about the average accuracy of 1937 aircraft bombing dodging warships. In a staight out fight between two well matched warships moving on parallel courses going at it "hammer and tongs" (to quote Hipper 8) ) the hit accuracy may actually be able to excede that of aircraft. If you look at WWII photos of ships being attacked by bombers from above, there sure are a lot of splashes repesenting bombs missing their targets.

Otherwise, I agree with you both 100%. The Battlecarrier was always a failed idea and the Japs only introduced theirs in desperation to replace lost carriers. Personally, the Bismarck class was always one of my very favorites, one of the most beautiful of warships, and I hate to see them butchered this way. (sorry, East) I want to see BB's, BC's, cruisers, small ships and subs...... with airpower more as a wild card factor than a dominant one.

I think that a proper balance of unit types in this game cannot be brought about if every player is able to simply choose whatever ship or plane they cared to fight in for a given multiplayer session. I feel that the numbers and types of ships available in ERT should be controlled by the game management and doled out per Faction. They could then be distributed to each factions battlegroups for them to assign to the individual players. The smaller the ship, the more plentiful they should be. This way the units fighting during a given session would be reasonably balanced in types available. This could also be used to control the impact of carriers on the game, say giving only two per faction, or some low number like that. They then would become very valuable and require the proper escorting, etc. I'm sure some sort of fair method of assigning the ships can be made so everyone is happy. It would also be nice to see some sort of loss replacement method in place, or an economic system, with the small ships seeing quick replacement, but the big ones taking longer. The system should remain, of course, as flexible as possible so that, say the Assassins can be in Torpedo Boats and then later switch to DD's, etc................but all of them returning in BB's?

Ulsterman, your comments regarding the Russian Kiev Class cruisercarrier were very interesting to me. While I was in the Navy I was aboard a destroyer that shadowed the Russian naval formations in the Med. We frequently were near these ships and I can clearly remember watching flight ops on the Moskva and Kiev. They were most impressive at the time and we had nothing like them, but they were considered more effective ASW launching platforms than air superiority. I have a bunch of photos of 1970's Russian ships I took somewhere and will post them when I can find the time.

Regards,

SeaWolf

Assassins can be in Torpedo Boats and then later switch to DD's, etc................but all of them returning in BB's?

Nah, we don't really do battleships. Submarines, torpedo boats, corvettes and destroyers are our main strengths. Expect to see Battlecruisers turn tail & run when they hear the Assassins are on patrol!

/bux