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Will aircraft carriers be added to the game?


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Should aircraft carriers be added?  

126 members have voted

  1. 1. Should aircraft carriers be added?

    • Yeah
      91
    • Nah
      36


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2 minutes ago, Accipiter said:

funny you say that because submarines are also confirmed in the game already (as an abstract campaign map only option, not controllable in battles),

man a lot of you really don't do your research about what was already confirmed in the game before posting do you? 😛

Guess they forgot about rule the waves lol.

Not sure why he assumes subs would be the end of bb's since they were notrious for being useless in straight up fleet combat scenario's. (few scenarios where they outright sunk enemy combat ships by themselves

Im guessing this game will take place between 1880(0-9) to 1942-43, looking at the current tech and hulls in the game so far. Which is fine since thats means more content and replayability (although balancing will become a pain once more things are added in).

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3 minutes ago, Accipiter said:

funny you say that because submarines are also confirmed in the game already (as an abstract campaign map only option, not controllable in battles),

Yes I read that and saw that it was a campaign thing, not a tactical combat thing.  We will quickly find that if we put Aircraft Carriers and Subs in the same local operational area as Battleships, the big boys are just big targets. 

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2 minutes ago, Cptbarney said:

Not sure why he assumes subs would be the end of bb's since they were notrious for being useless in straight up fleet combat scenario's. (few scenarios where they outright sunk enemy combat ships by themselves

Subs were generally non-existant in major fleet actions because they were unable to keep up with the surface ships.  If you place a submarine in the same water space as a heavy combatant, the sub will prove decisive.  Ask the crews of the Royal Oak ,Indianapolis, Barham, Kongo, Suffren, etc..

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22 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Subs were generally non-existant in major fleet actions because they were unable to keep up with the surface ships.  If you place a submarine in the same water space as a heavy combatant, the sub will prove decisive.  Ask the crews of the Royal Oak ,Indianapolis, Barham, Kongo, Suffren, etc..

I think 'will' is a little strong. I agree that they'd pose a big threat, but often kills by submarines seem to have been due to bad luck, bad seamanship, or bad damage control. They might take a toll, but if ships are designed properly I don't think they're that likely to be truly decisive. CVs are more likely to be a huge threat, but that depends on how they're implemented, and how many either you or an enemy power makes.

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39 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:

Subs were generally non-existant in major fleet actions because they were unable to keep up with the surface ships.  If you place a submarine in the same water space as a heavy combatant, the sub will prove decisive.  Ask the crews of the Royal Oak ,Indianapolis, Barham, Kongo, Suffren, etc..

Not really, once countermeasures came into play subs became irrelevant very quickly even more so than BB's in general when having to engage ships. Those events could of been avoided with proper screening and scouting (CV's could easily spot Subs from the air and some where even sunk from the air). Maybe not all of them but probs most. Never heard of sub being spotted and still sinking an enemy ship after a decent engagement.

Either way subs will only be a supplementary thing like in RTW (unless they actually change it) so that possibly won't be an issue to worry about in general.

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the one issue i have with having CV as an supplementary campaign map only option like subs, is that as mentionned by others above, unlike subs, they were truly decisive in which side is winning or losing the naval war during a conflict, especially late game of 1940 and later, they matter a lot more than your surface combat ships you actually control.

while i still think carriers should be in the game as i said above, and i still think doing them like submarines is probably the most viable way in terms of workload, i could see it being extremely annoying and cheesy to just have a popup message at the start of a war that says "your carriers have engaged with the ennemy carriers and decisively lost, all of them but 1 have been sunk. you have now 1 carrier left in your entire navy while the ennemy has 7". and then for the rest of the campaign you're forced on the defensive because you can't ever move out of your home ports into the ocean without risking to be a sitting duck to ennemy carriers and losing most of your surface ships without being able to do anything about it, all of this because of a carrier battle that was decided by RNG you had no control over...

i'm not really sure how to adress this.

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Rule the waves needed another game to make carriers (and planes) works. The first game was already great without them and without spotter planes either. I think adding carriers need more thought than an abstract layer like submarines. Carriers operations are really interesting and can translate well in an RTS, unlike submarines. It would be a shame to make them work behind the scene (while still needing significant AA bubbles as an escort)

I'm perfectly fine with UA:D ditching carriers for a more dreadnought focused approach. It's better to make one thing work well first.

Edited by Tousansons
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My suggestions:

1) Carriers should not be abstracted in battle, they can and were engaged by gunfire (eg. Gambier Bay and Glorious – yes these were in WW2 but no reason such events couldn't have happened in UAD's timeframe).

2) In most of UAD's timeframe, carriers would provide scouting, recon, and strategic strike capabilities. These can all be handled abstractly, so for example having carriers would:

-increase your ability to spot and track enemy fleets and therefore increase the likelihood of engaging on your terms or avoiding battle if desired

-provide information about the enemy

-deliver strikes at fixed targets such as enemy ports or other large installations which cause corresponding damage to the enemy on the campaign map

-reduce probably of sub attacks

3) Carriers do not need to be customizable in the designer. Have a few pre-set generic types of "carrier" such as 1 – Seaplane tender (Eg. Campania), 2 – Early light/escort carrier (Eg. Argus), 3 – Late fleet carrier (Eg. Saratoga). The player chooses which to build depending on the available tech and each one progressively provides a stronger version of the above capabilities.

4) For in battle capabilities like artillery spotting, I don't know if and how the devs currently plan to implement that so will reserve comment. But we could probably live without it, and if so aircraft shouldn't really need to appear in battle and that makes things much easier on the devs.

So I think carriers could be implemented fairly plausibly without requiring too much effort as long as the game sticks to the mid 1930s time limit where it could be argued that direct carrier air power was not yet decisive in naval battles.

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Curious how abstracting CVs would work once you interdict a CVG with your own surface ships. Will it be an auto-battle on the map kind of thing or will there be an actual gameplay interaction for this. And if so, how would that play out? Will CVs be present in combat scenarios and would they be able to launch aircraft or would they behave like armed transports unable to launch aircraft due an immediate danger of being shelled instead? (not even sure that was a thing in real life, tbh)

CVs seem like an entirely different battlespace that the developers would have to model. There's no doubt about how much value-add CVs could have in developing both the timeline of the game and the gameplay mechanics, but that's still a lot of work to be had if accuracy and fidelity is a concern. 

The presence of high-end battleship hulls such as the Yamato hull just makes the whole thing confusing to me. 

Must be a bit of a headache for the devs as well. Hope something happens in this space though.

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On 10/21/2019 at 7:35 AM, Cptbarney said:

Not really, once countermeasures came into play subs became irrelevant very quickly even more so than BB's in general when having to engage ships. Those events could of been avoided with proper screening and scouting (CV's could easily spot Subs from the air and some where even sunk from the air). Maybe not all of them but probs most.

Numerous warships were sunk by subs despite being screened. Even in the quoted example Barham and Kongo were both heavily escorted. The US sub force sank almost as much of the IJN as the carriers did, despite being a tiny fraction of the USN. Heck, there were escort carriers sunk by subs...

On 10/21/2019 at 7:35 AM, Cptbarney said:

 Never heard of sub being spotted and still sinking an enemy ship after a decent engagement.

Plenty of examples, recommend to begin by reading about U-9's attack on the 7th Cruiser Squadron in September 1914 all the way to Sealion's attack on the First Striking Force and Archerfish's attack on the Shinano!

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1 hour ago, Commodore Sandurz said:

Numerous warships were sunk by subs despite being screened. Even in the quoted example Barham and Kongo were both heavily escorted. The US sub force sank almost as much of the IJN as the carriers did, despite being a tiny fraction of the USN. Heck, there were escort carriers sunk by subs...

That was due to the allied submarine plans being ineffective at the start and the IJN getting way too overconfident that subs couldn't do anything so ASW was a very low prioity to the japanese, radar and sonar on there end was pretty bad as well and commence defence was a joke. Barham also detected a sub around 1000metres out but disregarded it and all three torpedoes struck pretty close together causing a huge mag explosion.

Also kongo was attacked by escort carriers and destroyers not just a lone sub (although badly damaged the escort carrier and some damage was inflicted onto kongo despite being near misses.

Still once countermeasures came into play and peeps actually started being aware of their surroundings, torping big ships became pretty difficult afterwards. Subs were effective to a degree, but mainly if the enemy was unaware, poor equipment, imcompetance or poor ship design (or all of them at once).

(shinano kept turning into the sub despite detecting it pretty early despite this the zig zag movements were pointless as all they needed to do was kite away and simply allow depth charges to sink her, funnily enough one of the DD's litterally sailed right over the sub but didn't detect her)

 

1 hour ago, Commodore Sandurz said:

Plenty of examples, recommend to begin by reading about U-9's attack on the 7th Cruiser Squadron in September 1914 all the way to Sealion's attack on the First Striking Force and Archerfish's attack on the Shinano!

True, subs did sink a lot of ships but the overwhelming majority were, ocean liners, troopships, hellships. Although almost all AC's sunk by subs were japanese (which either says a lot about their ship design or the competance of american sub crews).

I would prefer if the carriers were customisable mainly due to the fact that you will play as nations that never built any (well depending on how the next 5-6 alphas go).

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Because the basics of a dreadnought don't change that dramatically so they can continue into the 30's. Those things you listed will probably be some of the most advance things you can get in the game. Guns are still guns. Armor is still armor. It seems like radar mostly just increased vision so not a huge mechanic technically.

Adding carriers and more WW2/interwar tech would expand it from just the late game to a new part of the game. Right now radar and the Yamato are probably some of the most advanced things in the game to cap out the tech tree. If you expanded it to include carriers the new late game where progress stops would probably be the 40's or 50's.

The game is a battleship and surface combat game not a 20th century naval game. It would be a entirely new system of combat with a ton of new mechanics. Or it would be abstracted and they would barely exist. Like a direct damage ability.

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5 hours ago, Zak MacKay said:

Because the basics of a dreadnought don't change that dramatically so they can continue into the 30's. Those things you listed will probably be some of the most advance things you can get in the game. Guns are still guns. Armor is still armor. It seems like radar mostly just increased vision so not a huge mechanic technically.

Adding carriers and more WW2/interwar tech would expand it from just the late game to a new part of the game. Right now radar and the Yamato are probably some of the most advanced things in the game to cap out the tech tree. If you expanded it to include carriers the new late game where progress stops would probably be the 40's or 50's.

The game is a battleship and surface combat game not a 20th century naval game. It would be a entirely new system of combat with a ton of new mechanics. Or it would be abstracted and they would barely exist. Like a direct damage ability.

Going to wager stoping point will probably be 1940s becuse we already seen that a starting point is 1930. If that is the cause that would give us minimum of almost 20 years of carriers being in service. Remeber carriers were being laid down before 1920.

Edited by DarkTerren
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20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

That was due to the allied submarine plans being ineffective at the start

I don't see any major issues with Royal Navy ASW (if that's what you mean) "at the start" anymore than would have affected any other power. It was arguably the most capable ASW force in the world and it had the entirety of WW1 experience plus advancements in the two decades since. But Barham was sunk over two years into the war so that's not "at the start", the escort carriers were even later.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

the IJN getting way too overconfident that subs couldn't do anything so ASW was a very low prioity to the japanese, radar and sonar on there end was pretty bad as well and commence defence was a joke.

I certainly don't think the IJN was overconfident that subs couldn't do anything and that ASW wasn't a priority for them by November 1944. Their radar wasn't up to par with the best allied sets but was sufficient to detect Sealion. Their best passive sonar, being based on the German GHG, was actually better than the allies'. Kongo wasn't part of a merchant convoy so I don't see the relevance there.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Barham also detected a sub around 1000metres out but disregarded it and all three torpedoes struck pretty close together causing a huge mag explosion.

Barham still got sunk whether it detected it or not.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Also kongo was attacked by escort carriers and destroyers not just a lone sub (although badly damaged the escort carrier and some damage was inflicted onto kongo despite being near misses.

That was a different battle a month earlier. The "dent" was on the starboard side. Sealion hit Kongo on the port side.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Still once countermeasures came into play and peeps actually started being aware of their surroundings, torping big ships became pretty difficult afterwards. Subs were effective to a degree, but mainly if the enemy was unaware, poor equipment, imcompetance or poor ship design (or all of them at once).

Except that there are numerous instances of torpedo hits on large ships despite the enemy having good equipment, being aware (I'm assuming it means being aware of a sub threat, but any warship at sea fighting a war with an opponent with subs should be aware of a sub threat), having good ship design and trained crews.

What I would have said is torpedoing of big ships becomes pretty difficult if your opponent has an overwhelming advantage in resources that they can devote to ASW vis-a-vis comparatively very limited resources for your sub force. For example the Kriegsmarine vs the Allies who spent at least 9.6 times the resources (and that's a very conservative figure) on the 2nd Battle of the Atlantic.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

(shinano kept turning into the sub despite detecting it pretty early despite this the zig zag movements were pointless as all they needed to do was kite away and simply allow depth charges to sink her, funnily enough one of the DD's litterally sailed right over the sub but didn't detect her)

Humans make mistakes. For every ASW mistake I'm sure you can find just as many mistakes by sub crews. I wonder how many additional capital ships would have been sunk if every sub crew never made a mistake?

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

True, subs did sink a lot of ships but the overwhelming majority were, ocean liners, troopships, hellships.

Yes, because among many reasons there were far, far more merchants than warships, they were easier targets, and in some cases they were more important to the war effort.

20 hours ago, Cptbarney said:

Although almost all AC's sunk by subs were japanese (which either says a lot about their ship design or the competance of american sub crews).

I don't have time to find an exact list at the moment but I’m fairly certain it's around 8 each for both Allied and Axis carriers sunk by subs. Obviously all Axis carriers sunk were Japanese since they were the only ones who completed any.

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I would like to see CVs in the game.

Having said that, I think implementation is important. I've played a good number of naval games for the period, and I think something along these lines would work:

1. CVs increase whatever scouting value exists in a sea zone by X to be determined by the devs.

2. CVs are granted a small number of strike packages which increase in number and effectiveness based upon CV use and tech. Basically, someone's going to figure out CVs are the future over time.

2a. CV strike packages start out relatively ineffective, and improve in effectiveness over time.

2b. The number of strike packages increase over time.

2c. Said packages are AI-driven. They weight for ship size and then randomly choose targets. The player should have no control and the CV should have no map presence.

3. If a CV or CVs enter a sea zone, they should start with zero scouting, enabling them to be engaged on the surface. They should automatically retreat into the wind, launching periodic AI strike packages against their potential assailants.

 

Having said all that, I'd prefer Nick and crew focus on surface combat and return to CVs as the first ever DLC for their games. CVs require special attention and should be treated accordingly.

Edited by killjoy1941
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I think we can have CVs and control for combat air patrols.
Once target(s) is acquired CV will automatically choose a target.
Depending on the pilots training/experience they will select optimal target and hit with X % depending in the training and experience. Pilot experience can behave like brigade experience in ultimate general.
More pilots dead more damage to experience and strike effectiveness.
CVs would require 2 different exp counters. 1 for the plane maintenance crew and 1 for pilots.

Strike planes attack orders should be controllable like we have for torps and guns (None, Save, Normal, Aggressive). This would reflect the attack pattern. Safe will attack ships that posses minimal risk, normal medium risk and aggressive the most valuable target regardless of personal safety. (might be tad bit hard to implement)
 

Strike planes and combat air patrol squads and size?
Strike plane squad sizes should be some what adjustable minimum of 3 planes for combat air patrol and up to max 12 planes. strike planes from minimum of 6 to 12. Naturally the number of squads and planes in said squads depends in the carriers hangar size and plane tech. (ultimate generals army composition system would work here)

Flight leaders like brigade commanders from ultimate general?
I see no reason why not to have these.
Would give small bonuses to the squadrons performance.

Why control combat air patrols?
They serve 3 purposes. 1 to scout and provide vision (target identification depends on skill). 2 Defend the fleet or carrier from air strikes, escort strike planes.

Air combat and damage planes?
Planes that engage in air combat and suffers damage will try to return to carrier of possible after combat (if possible may disengage middle of air combat and may get shot down if enemy fighters has superiority).
Strike planes will also try to break formation if damage too badly unless they are set on aggressive mode.
If return to carrier is not possible and the plane makes a landing in water there is a X% chance pilot is recovered after battle.

What else will CVs bring to ship construct?
Not only would you need to think were you put the silly amount of 2" guns you now need to balance between gun numbers and AA layout. The increase of air threat as time passes would work hand in hand with real evolution of naval combat.

+Pros and -Cons 
+Many of the required menu tabs exists and should be usable by the studio from ultimate general
+Immersion and loyalty to realism
+More tactics and flexibility
+RNG can be used for pilot recovery 
+Balancing

- AA effects and gun sounds would require more computer power but that can be optimized.
-Complexity to model air combat
-I have no idea how complex in reality it would be to implement these carriers :)
-Balancing

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14 hours ago, Commodore Sandurz said:

I don't see any major issues with Royal Navy ASW (if that's what you mean) "at the start" anymore than would have affected any other power. It was arguably the most capable ASW force in the world and it had the entirety of WW1 experience plus advancements in the two decades since. But Barham was sunk over two years into the war so that's not "at the start", the escort carriers were even later.

I certainly don't think the IJN was overconfident that subs couldn't do anything and that ASW wasn't a priority for them by November 1944. Their radar wasn't up to par with the best allied sets but was sufficient to detect Sealion. Their best passive sonar, being based on the German GHG, was actually better than the allies'. Kongo wasn't part of a merchant convoy so I don't see the relevance there.

Barham still got sunk whether it detected it or not.

That was a different battle a month earlier. The "dent" was on the starboard side. Sealion hit Kongo on the port side.

Except that there are numerous instances of torpedo hits on large ships despite the enemy having good equipment, being aware (I'm assuming it means being aware of a sub threat, but any warship at sea fighting a war with an opponent with subs should be aware of a sub threat), having good ship design and trained crews.

What I would have said is torpedoing of big ships becomes pretty difficult if your opponent has an overwhelming advantage in resources that they can devote to ASW vis-a-vis comparatively very limited resources for your sub force. For example the Kriegsmarine vs the Allies who spent at least 9.6 times the resources (and that's a very conservative figure) on the 2nd Battle of the Atlantic.

Humans make mistakes. For every ASW mistake I'm sure you can find just as many mistakes by sub crews. I wonder how many additional capital ships would have been sunk if every sub crew never made a mistake?

Yes, because among many reasons there were far, far more merchants than warships, they were easier targets, and in some cases they were more important to the war effort.

I don't have time to find an exact list at the moment but I’m fairly certain it's around 8 each for both Allied and Axis carriers sunk by subs. Obviously all Axis carriers sunk were Japanese since they were the only ones who completed any.

That still doesn't prove subs were king of the seas no matter how you spin it.

Like i said its mainly down to skill and good intelligence (sometimes) on the subs part, huge amounts of luck. Underestimation on the enemy's part plus lack of ASW and imcompetance, bad luck, poor intelligence etc.

The real kings are CV's. Subs are good, but like i said before sub's would fare extremely poorly in combat where both combatants know the positions of each other and have the ability to sink each other (most ships did). Hense why subs never fought alongside main fleets but usually veer'ed of somewhere else to get a better angle and/or were in a position days/hours before to launch an ambush.

Yeah subs sunk a lot but far more were sunk by guns, depth charges and aircraft. USS wahoo being an example.

Don't get me wrong i find subs fascinating and wouldn't mind seeing them in game, but they weren't the kings by any stretch.

Either way the stuff you said is still pretty interesting regardless.

I think we should end this here lol we are getting a tad off topic.😁

Edited by Cptbarney
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I've had some further thoughts on this subject and did some light research on carrier numbers, battleship numbers, the Washington naval treaty and the Yamato and I'm now of the opinion that carriers don't have any real functionality or necessity in this game. As I said before, the devs have said the campaign is suppose to run from 1890 to 1930+ and I'm now of the opinion that this means the campaign will probably not include the second world war. But what about the Yamato some of you cry out, it's in that build a modern battleship mission! From what I could find the Yamato class was designed between 1934 and 1936, fitting well with in that 1930+ decade. Furthermore, for a game titled Dreadnoughts the fact that a yamato like battleship is presented to you the player under a mission titled build a "modern" battleship says a lot. I see the yamato like modern battleship as the equal bookend to all the old predreadnought style battleships of the earlier missions and no doubt early game. 

So where does that leave carriers? Well the washington naval treaty of 1922 put some restrictions on carrier development. And furthermore at the end of it there were very very few fleet carriers in any sort of service or under construction until the mid to late 1930s. The washington naval treaty let the Royal Navy have the HMS Argus, converted from an ocean liner, HMS Furious converted from a silly (but awesome) battle cruiser, HMS Eagle converted from a battleship and greenlight the conversions of HMS Courageous and HMS Glorious into carriers and permitted the HMS Hermes to continue under construction. Japan has the Hosho and get's the green light to convert the Akagi and Kaga into carriers. The US has the Langley and gets the green light to convert the Saratoga and Lexington battlecruisers into carriers. And France gets the green light to convert the Bearn into an aircraft carrier, but we don't talk about that. 

Thus by the end of the 1920's there are a grand total of 13 aircraft carriers, 11 being fleet carriers, in service world wide. And this is compared to so large amount of battleships that I'm having trouble getting an accurate count barring serious digging for information. The vast majority of aircraft carriers to see action during World War Two were commissioned in the early 1940's, about mid war.  There's a lot of great discussion here about aircraft carrier successes during the second world war but as far as I see it, assuming the modern battleship to be end game technology being designed in the mid 1930's I just can't help but think that this game will end before WWII and the rise of the era of carriers. The battle of Jutland during the first world war was the biggest dreadnought rumble to ever happen, with the battle of Tsushima and the battle of the yellow sea to be the two biggest brawls between predreadnought battleships. I forsee the golden era in this game to fall between the Russo Japanese War and the Washington Naval Treaty. 

The game is titled Dreadnoughts, aircraft carriers were rare, experimental and limited in their capabilities during the later dreadnought era and didn't come into their own until WWII and while I may have said before that this game might run into WWII, upon reflection I don't believe it will. Therefore I just can't see fleet carriers of escort carriers being a thing at all in the game and further I can't see sea plane carriers being in the game either. No carrier, seaplane or otherwise, had any place being in the line of battle slugging it out with other fleet ships in a heavy gun engagement. While other popular warship games have a fancy little health bar above your carrier that allows you to operate at full functionality until it runs out what's a 14 in shell going to do to the flight decks functionality in a game such as this? How are 18 in HE going to react with your airplanes refueling, rearming and repairing? These just seem like really good ways to quickly lose your carriers. 

And while it doesn't really need much discussion, mechanically everything the game needs for fleet surface engagements is already there. Carriers would require a whole new suite of mechanics to be implemented into the game, and with them not really having any role during the Dreadnought era it just ads more weight to my not seeing them being included in the game. 

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I find it strange to say that while they totally fall into the era the games uses, then to turn around and say "and this is the reason why they shouldn't play a role". Mind you that sea plan carries are overlook here since they slightly predate regular CV's

Especially in a game which is less about historical ships but what if.

I'm pretty sure you can build a lot more ships with 16 inch, 17 inch or 18 inch and perhaps when finish with more then 18 inch guns, the historical accurate.

 

And the famous mechanic argument overlooks that catapult airplanes were a big thing for ship designs during the later half of the period of the game.

Should that also be ignored?

 

 

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