Commodore Sandurz

My thoughts on how to have a decent implementation of subs without requiring too much effort: On the campaign map (so outside of the realtime battles between surface warships) subs should be abstracted with some chance of attacking and sinking ships based on technology, numbers, etc. Depending on how the campaign ends up working, the player could perhaps decide patrol areas for subs. Within battle, if subs are present they act independently outside the player's control. If enemy ships pass close enough, they may attempt a torpedo attack. The player could increase the probability of friendly subs appearing in battle through doctrine (eg. putting all subs on "fleet support"), building "fleet" subs like the K class, or perhaps some other method but too early say without seeing how the campaign works. So basically, similar to how Steam and Iron did it. If people don't want to play with subs, have a campaign and custom battle option to not have them. At this point I don't know what the game's timeline actually is, but if we are including the entirety of WW2, I would say that while ASW tech improved so did much of the equipment to counter it. Even the surface-optimized submersibles could generally survive and remain somewhat effective provided they got the right equipment: Radar and radar detectors capable of covering all the threat bands, snorkels, acoustic homing and pattern running torpedoes, anechoic coatings, etc. That's not even counting the XXI or Walter boats which could render even the best WW2 ASW forces impotent. Of course in the case of the second Battle of the Atlantic the Germans were out-spent by the allies by a factor of 9.6 or more, and so even when they could equip some of their u-boats it wasn't nearly enough due to the comparatively massive number of well equipped allied ASW assets. Reduce the allied resources by a factor of ten or increase them for the Kriegsmarine by the same amount (or bring the XXI forward a year or two instead of the literal last days of the war) and you'd have had a very different outcome. In such a more "balanced" fight like that in the Pacific, the US Navy sub force were very effective right up to the very end of the war.

Every minute of development time spent on implementing unrealistic 120 thousand ton monstrosities is a minute that is not spent on other far more critical elements. Adding ships which would never have been constructed simply takes away from the development of those things which did exist or could have existed and are currently not implemented or could be implemented better. To comment on this bit specifically, I don't expect we would have seen any "crazy" ships without the treaties. I have seen a plot of the general trend of battleship tonnage increases over the years before the treaties, that then extrapolated that trend into a hypothetical no-treaties 1920s-1940s, and Yamato ended up fitting right on that trend. So Yamato is effectively a historical example of a treaty-less battleship. But as has been pointed out, it would still likely have been exceptional, just not by as great a margin as it was. Docking, canal and economic limitations would have likely capped most navies' largest battleships at around the 50 thousand ton mark. Eg. see the Royal Navy's late Lion design studies from the mid 40s and the RN imposing a 50 thousand ton limit there.

Wars between AI nations as well please. The lack of them in RtW (aside from those allied to the player) is another serious campaign flaw there.

Well I'd hope it's not just one plane being sent... And those planes will likely have the opportunity to get back, rearm and return to neutralize the target (if they didn't on the first strike), before the comparatively plodding Iowa can get into gun range.

Essex could carry 100 but that includes a couple of spares; most sources ignore the spares so they get 90ish "active" (usually listed as 36 fighters, 36 dive bombers and 18 torpedo bombers) but there were around 10 others carried, mostly spares. Hence my statement "upwards of 100". Of course the Midway class could carry significantly more, I was thinking Essex because it was the most common. But let's look at the details of those shells and payloads, in particular the bursting charges: Iowa AP Mark 8: 18.55 kg Yamato APC Type 91: 33.85 kg TBF/SB2C AP Mark 1: 109 kg (3.2 times the Yamato AP shell / 5.9 times the Iowa AP shell) TBF/SB2C Mark 13: 270 kg (8 times the Yamato AP shell / 14.5 times the Iowa AP shell, plus it's guaranteed damage below the waterline on a hit) Oh dear indeed! Even Yamato's shell bursting charge is less than a third that of an armour piercing bomb, not to mention the torpedo is in another league of damage-dealing. So much for the "very little firepower" claim on the carrier airgroup. And all of that is not even factoring in that the aircraft can deliver that firepower to a target at a much, much greater distance. Christian already covered your hit rate claims but I'll add that if you have to put your battleship within range of the enemy battleship's guns then that's an additional risk that a carrier doesn't have to take. Historically carriers demonstrated that their aircraft had sufficient firepower and reach to mission kill or sink battleships while said battleships could not respond against the carriers. So why close in with battleships when you can engage from a safe distance using aircraft (which were much cheaper and faster to repair or replace)? The fact that you have still not responded to any of the points I raised in our discussion on page 4, except now this one, which wasn't even part of my response to you, says everything about who is serious in this discussion.

You do realize the amount of oil 1100 u-boats used up let alone the amount of steel they used up? Of course not. Just in Type VIIs alone: 700 x 770 tons = 539,000 tons combined displacement. H-39 displacement: 53,400 tons. So 1/10th of that spent on VIIs. Let alone the amount of steel, eh? At no point have I argued that KM "stooping" BBs is a reason why CVs can't be in the game... where the heck did you even come up with that? So in your scenario Japan wouldn't have desperately converted BBs that they no longer had? You don't say! Hey maybe they could raise them from the seafloor... I was going to respond to the rest of your post but those last two statements of yours speak for themselves. I suspect you'd again ignore what I post and just go off arguing against things I haven't even said.

Escort carriers are far too slow to keep up with battleships and if you seriously think one or two escort carriers (~20 ac each) are going to be sufficient to keep multiple fleet carrier airgroups away then there's really no point arguing further. Upwards of 100 fighters and bombers per carrier is "very little firepower"? You cannot be serious.

Sure, though hoping for bad weather to protect you is what I would call a "Hail Mary" strategy. And yes I would hope it's understood we're discussing WW2 exclusively at this point unless stated otherwise. Was there an encounter between those two? Or are you attempting to refer to the sinking of the Glorious by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau? - Weather I already covered. - Radar range? I suppose it gives more time to prepare crew for AA action, and, if in port, prepare defences around the battleships. So sure, this might increase survivability a bit. But it doesn't solve the core problem. - What does a sub have to do with CVs vs BBs? Why should I care if there were any alone or not? CV airstrike on Tirpitz is a poor example, it was heavily protected by terrain and smokescreens during its stay in the fjords. Tirpitz's AA had little to do with it. On the other hand, it sat there and took damage and casualties and never managed to attack the carriers. Goes back to being able to take punishment while not being able to return it is a losing strategy. HUH? Hiryu was sunk before South Dakota was even declared ready for active duty! Are you just randomly making this up and hoping people don't know any better? You omitted: Conte di Cavour Caio Duilio Littorio Arizona Oklahoma Nevada California West Virginia Ise and Hyuga 😛 I expect your response might "but they weren't at sea" to which I would reply "I couldn't care less, why shouldn't a carrier leverage it's ability to attack a battleship in port much more effectively than a battleship could? Why attack the battleships at sea when you might have an easier time disabling or sinking them in port? How many carriers in port were sunk by battleships?" Well I certainly agree that the CVs dominated but the Musashi was definitely not overwhelmed in quantity. Musashi was part of Kurita's Center Force, which consisted of (going off wiki here): Yamato Musashi Nagato Kongo Haruna ten heavy cruisers two light cruisers 15 destroyers. While sailing with this force, Musashi was attacked and sunk by aircraft from: Intrepid Essex Lexington Enterprise Franklin Cabot (light carrier) So in terms of capital ships the numbers are actual equal. And if you consider tonnage, the heavy escort, and the fact that two of the BBs were really the battleship equivalent of "supercarriers", then they're not even close, the BBs are far ahead.

Some of those hit claims seem off... such as you seem to be counting "near" misses as hits which is a bit disingenuous to say the least (for example Roma was only directly hit by 2 Fritzs and probably only the second hit alone would have sunk it). Or the Nagato, do you have a source on it being torpedoed after Baker instead of sinking on its own? First I've heard that claim. Anyway, I'm not going to cover all of them. I agree that that in general battleships could obviously could take a bit more punishment then carriers, and *potentially* inflict more damage in a shorter period of time, but both of those are meaningless when: - The carrier can locate the battleship much more easily than vice versa. - The carrier can avoid damage by simply staying out of range of the battleship's guns. - The carrier's aircraft (which are comparatively cheap and expendable) can attack the battleship at leisure. - The carrier's aircraft, even if their overall firepower is less than the battleship's, are still capable of at least disabling the battleship. - These effects are amplified the more carriers and battleships you put in the fight, since carrier aircraft can easily concentrate fire on a single battleship, return to rearm and repeat. Being able to take more punishment than your opponent but at the same time not being able to fight back at him is a losing proposition.

The H-39s were cancelled before: - The Bismarck was lost. - German warships were being continuously bombed in harbour. - Germany was fighting a land war with the USSR. Speaking of missing the point, I accounted for Germany's situation by only referencing their existing, historical naval spending. Did you completely miss that part of my post, and the entire discussion it was a small part of? I didn't forget about the eastern front as it's irrelevant to this discussion; I mentioned the numbers of Type VIIs that were built and that was despite the eastern front, so clearly sufficient resources were still allocated to the naval war to allow the construction of many battleships had they chosen to construct them instead of u-boats. With over 1100 u-boats commissioned any claim that they didn't have the resources to do so is absurd. If the Kriegsmarine had expected the H-39s to be cost effective then they would have continued their construction and built more by reducing their u-boat construction. Since they weren't, the Germans, like everyone else, ended up abandoning battleship construction. Because that cancellation did not coincide with other widespread cancellations for the same class of ship. Ships can get cancelled for any number of reasons (such as Hitler's whims), but when there is a consistent pattern of all new construction of a class of warship being abandoned by every major naval power at almost the same time during a world war, then the implication of that should be quite clear to everyone. And since you brought it up, Graf Zeppelin's construction was actually continued for years after the H-39s were cancelled, so even the Kriegsmarine appeared to view carriers as more valuable to their war effort than battleships. Not sure what you're actually trying to argue here... that battleships weren't obsolete in the Atlantic? Everyone stopped building battleships, whether their primary theatre was the Pacific or the Atlantic. And why should the British waste resources on making some questionable conversions just because Japan did it? By 1942 every major navy had determined that they preferred new carriers or other types of warships over new battleships, regardless of each nation's particular situation - there's no "blend out" of the overall situation there. I don't get your obsession with the land war, I have only ever referenced Germany's historical naval construction which occurred *despite* that land war, and how that historical naval spending could have been used for battleships instead of u-boats.

Two H-39s were laid down and the cost of each of them was estimated at 240.85 Reichsmarks, or roughly equivalent to 50 Type VIICs. Seeing as how over 700 Type VIIs were built and some money had already been spent on design and construction of the H-39s when they were cancelled, I don't agree with the notion that Germany did not have the resources. They could have completed them if they had wanted to, in exchange for a reduction in u-boat numbers. http://www.kbismarck.com/warship-construction-cost.html H-42, 43, 44 were a paper designs as I mentioned only as an example of what was being planned in an attempt to design a sufficiently armoured battleship. Obviously these had no realistic chance of being constructed by Germany or really any country when they could build much more cost effective ships. On Shinano and Ise/Hyuga, yes Japan hadn't lost BBs at the time the conversion was decided upon, but by the very nature of the conversions it was effectively going to lose them, just to gain some "hybrids" and a limited capability (for its size) carrier. Even the Fusos were planned to be converted at one point. That the IJN was going to reduce their battleship force in exchange for these questionable vessels says a lot about the IJN's view of battleship obsolescence circa 1942. The last BBs were laid down in 1941 so it's safe to say that by 1942 it was well understood by the major navies that the battleship was obsolete. In 1942 there were no operational missiles or jets but there were carriers, and plenty more of them being laid down.

Because in reality they did. Why build a battleship when you can build a carrier for equivalent (or usually actually lesser) cost that has ten or more times greater strike and scout range? Kamikazes suicidal? I admit I got a chuckle out of that one But as to USN showing a middle finger, well, a quick scan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Allied_vessels_struck_by_Japanese_special_attack_weapons shows 400+ hits, including fifteen hits on US battleships, almost all in 1945. 42 hits on carriers too (unsurprising, they were the primary targets), including 3 CVEs sunk. Now imagine a Japan with equivalent resources to the USN and RN and how much more damage they could have done. Are you really trying to claim that every warship built before Dec 7, 1941 was never expected to defend itself against air attacks? Despite aircraft and carriers having existed for decades before that?! The anti-aircraft guns fitted on some of them beginning in the 1910s were just for decoration? The utility of carriers in the offense was well understood by the USN by the early thirties, even if the formal offensive force was still the battleships. See the USN "Fleet Problem" exercises of the early 30s (which included simulated dive bomber attacks and damage on battleships) and the subsequent construction of CV-4 to CV-8. Further the carriers were equipped with torpedo and dive bombers in the 20s and 30s, hardly a sign of a force whose sole intended purpose is to spot the enemy. You might want to look up the primary role of the Swordfish... And I suppose the Taranto attack didn't happen either? Or it could be said that a partially-equipped carrier with a small flight group of obsolescent aircraft managed to damage the latest and greatest German battleship with no damage to itself. Seems like a win for the carrier to me. I hope the game doesn't have some sort of pre-scripted event that always occurs in December 1941... It would be nice if technology research was dynamic to a degree (as in dependent on foreign technologies and/or events in battle) but that's asking for a lot. Anyway at that point why build carriers to escort your fleets when instead you can build them to become the centrepiece of your fleets (existing battleships notwithstanding)? It's amusing that you say others have a short sited view and then claim Yamamoto was the first one to think outside the box. See Grand Joint Exercise No. 4 where USN carriers launched a highly successful simulated surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1932, nine years before Yamamoto's alleged "outside the box" thinking! The cancellations of the Montanas, the last two Iowas, the Lions, the H-39s, the Shinano and Ise conversions, plus the "design a battleship that might actually survive" studies like the H-42+ is pretty much all one really needs to know about battleship obsolescence in the 40s.

I actually agree with you and I think they would have been effective. But as you say we don't know for sure and it's debatable hence why I used the word arguably. That's why I think that, at least for a surface combat focused game set in the game's official timeframe, I think you can probably get away with not having in-battle air attacks while still being reasonably historically plausible. Admittedly it does get worse the further into the 20s and 30s you go... And that's why I'd be perfectly happy if the base game was to end in the 20s and for the devs to focus on getting the surface combat of that era right instead of trying to do everything all at once.

I never claimed they were. There is a huge difference between "king of the seas" and "irrelevant" though. I've already covered this and I'd be saying the same thing again, but I just don't see any basis for your claim that the enemy had to have "lack of ASW and incompetance" to get torpedoed. A quick scan of carriers and battleships torpedoed by subs in WW2 shows that almost all were torpedoed while being screened usually by at least 4 escorts. That's not what I would call a "lack of ASW and incompetance". But I do agree that "luck" played a part as sub's typically slower speeds than most large warships meant reduced intercept opportunities. But given enough time and enough boats intercepts would and did inevitably occur. In an individual CV-vs-SS comparison, pre-Type XXI, I definitely agree that the CV was king. But on the basis of cost effectiveness in the sea denial role and how many subs you could get for the price of a single carrier, a case could probably be made that the subs would be a more effective use of resources if your sole objective was sea denial. They were just less likely to attack or be attacked. Generally speaking if they pre-positioned into spot where they could get a shot off at the enemy they could do damage and if not, the surface battle would occur without them, which is what usually happened. I don't consider a smaller probably of engagement to be the same as "faring extremely poorly". Depending on what you mean by alongside that isn't strictly true. For example the infamous British K class was very much designed to and briefly operated "alongside" the Grand Fleet. It just wasn't very good (though to be fair, it never really got much of a chance to prove itself). Normally it wasn't done because it was more effective to send the subs ahead and hope they got into a good position, or just have the subs operate independent of the fleet in the first place. Really really rough numbers but there was about 25 million tons of ships sunk by subs in WW2, vs about 1 million tons of subs sunk. So a "kill" ratio of about 25:1 in tonnage sunk by subs vs tonnage of subs lost. And it of course includes all the U-Boats and I-Boats sunk by the allies with their colossal resource advantage (and therefore isn't really representative of what a more "balanced" alt-history fight would have looked like; for example I imagine if the Kriegsmarine had resources similar to what the allies did, that number on the left would certainly be far higher still).

I make the distinction because the carriers built in the 10s and 20s, or more specifically the aircraft they carried at that time, were arguably not capable enough to present a direct threat to surface warships maneuvering at sea.