Heavy and light cruisers, what determens ingame what is what?

[desphex]

I've been wondering what is currently the decisive factor that decides what class a ship is within the game? is it a preset directive or pool that says this hull is and will always be this type of vessel?

This is something that realy gets odd and confusing around the 1920's ingame when you can put light cruiser main armement on the designated heavy cruiser hull and it stays a heavy cruiser, and simularly you can put heavy cruiser main armement on light cruiser hulls and it stays a light cruiser ingame.

This causes some issues in the game as heavy cruiser hulls get an around 60% penalty when firing on light cruisers since light cruiser hulls are for some reason seen as a smaller and lesser vessel which is somewhat odd in itself but i'll get back to that in a bit. Atm you can pummel heavy cruisers with light cruiser hulls equipped with heavy cruiser armement and enjoy that near 60% reduction in hit chance vs you, which often is the case against when the ai designs light cruisers.

In reality the thing that decided what a heavy or light cruiser is was a clause on the 1930's londen naval treaty saying any main gun battery with a size bigger then 155mm (6.2 inch) is a heavy cruiser and any main gun battery with a size up to 155mm (6.2 inch) is a light cruiser. So at this point i'de say either restrict the light cruiser class hulls to a max of 152mm (6inch) guns and heavy cruiser class to start at 178mm (7 inch) guns to quick fix this, or pool all light and heavy cruiser hulls together into 1 pool and let the main gun size be the decisive factor on what is by the game as a light or heavy cruiser.

Now back to size penalty this in it self is a bit bonkers the difference in dimentions (lenght, beam, draught) between light and heavy cruisers was in most navies minimal at best averaging in a 10 to 15m in overal lengh and around 1.5 to 2m in width difference between heavy and light cruiser. (Tho some navies Like the IJN had bigger diffences of up to 40m in lenght and up to 5m in width diffence). Overal the near 60% penalty a heavy cruiser incurs on it's accuraty vs a light cruiser is to much at most this should be around 10%, unless ofcourse you calculate that penalty on difference in displacement but that in itself is also kinda bonkers.

I hope this can get adressed in someway as it's kind of impractical and balance breaking between heavy and light cruisers at the moment.

[RAMJB]

19 hours ago, desphex said:

This is something that realy gets odd and confusing around the 1920's ingame when you can put light cruiser main armement on the designated heavy cruiser hull and it stays a heavy cruiser, and simularly you can put heavy cruiser main armement on light cruiser hulls and it stays a light cruiser ingame.

Welcome to classification hell.

Let's begin with the basics: the historical differentiation between inter-war "light" and "heavy" cruisers boils down to one thing and one thing only:

weapon size.

Since the London Treaty the separation made between both was that one. No other. You could have a 10000 ton warship armed with 6'' guns (no matter how many of them) it'd be a "light" cruiser. You could have the exact same hull armed with 8'' guns (no matter how many of them) and you'd get a "heavy cruiser".

As a result you get a zillion of instances of ships labelled as "light cruisers" which were "light" in nothing but the name. The ridiculousness of the situation is best described by Mogami, a class of ships that when given 15 6'' guns was classed as a "light Cruiser", but when rearmed with 10 8'' guns became "heavy" overnight...on the exact same hull dimensions and nominal displacement.

Many people have lost their mind over this. I remember in the RTW forums people making a whole mess about how the designer's limits for the CL class prevented them from designing a Cleveland or a Brooklyn - when in fact all they had to do to design those ships was to label them in the designer as what they were historically in practice: CAs with 6'' guns. But they didn't want to "because then they would be CAs and not CLs". Ignoring, of course that those ships, were, in fact, heavy cruisers just named "light" for treaty convenience first, out of pure custom later on once the treaties expired. Sigh. That thread still is in my nighmares about how unreasonable and shortsighted some people truly are.

Anyway. I see a similar situation here but from the other end. You see the designer hulls for the Light cruisers and their bonuses, and of course and undestandably you don't understand why a Cleveland should have those bonuses. Rest assured, ships like that shouldn't have them - and rest assured, ships like that  won't.

The Cleveland hull will be in the Heavy Cruiser tab - where it belongs (it was the same hull of the Baltimore class, for crying out loud). Same as the Towns, Mogamis, Brooklyns, etc.

The in-game "Light cruisers" are intended to represent truly light cruisers. Meaning - oversized destroyer flotilla leaders (a Japanese Nagara, for instance), and very fast scouts (the italian first iterations of the condottieris, or the german SpähKreuzer project). The hulls present there will cover that part of the spectrum: TRUE Light cruisers, those which were light cruisers not only in name, but also in characteristics. For those the bonuses make sense.

The big, 12x6'' (or more) family of Cruisers "light on name, but not on practice" you'll be building as heavy cruisers. Which is what they were in practice.
 

Edited December 19, 2019 by RAMJB

[Hangar18]

On 12/19/2019 at 6:03 AM, RAMJB said:

weapon size.

This is absolutely correct, but theres so much nuance past yes and no.

On 12/18/2019 at 12:34 PM, desphex said:

This is something that realy gets odd and confusing around the 1920's ingame when you can put light cruiser main armement on the designated heavy cruiser hull and it stays a heavy cruiser, and simularly you can put heavy cruiser main armement on light cruiser hulls and it stays a light cruiser ingame.

And we will call it historical accuracy. (this is the same ship class ramjb brought up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogami-class_cruiser

 

So like ram said, mostly it has to do with gun size, because thats what the treaties used. But once those treaties broke down, or people found a way to exploit them, you started seeing oddities. The Alaska class large cruisers are probably the best example for how broken sorting by gun size is.

In game, its based on hull, which is honestly the best way of going about this whole thing.

[desphex]

I agree for the most part with all of it and certainly can understand the stand and viewpoints of it all, but in my honest opinion being able to put 2 single 8 inch guns on what is called a "True" light cruiser is a bit overkill. Especialy around the 1920's point in game as you can make mean heavy cruiser (hull) killers out of them that way which kind of upsets the balance. In my perspective, those hulls should be limited to a maximum size of 6 inch guns around 1920 orso.

On a side note Realy loving the game so far, hoping to se more autentic german Armored/protected cruiser hulls later on in the game.

[NoZaku]

4 hours ago, desphex said:

I agree for the most part with all of it and certainly can understand the stand and viewpoints of it all, but in my honest opinion being able to put 2 single 8 inch guns on what is called a "True" light cruiser is a bit overkill. Especialy around the 1920's point in game as you can make mean heavy cruiser (hull) killers out of them that way which kind of upsets the balance. In my perspective, those hulls should be limited to a maximum size of 6 inch guns around 1920 orso.

On a side note Realy loving the game so far, hoping to se more autentic german Armored/protected cruiser hulls later on in the game.

I reckon the current system allows for more realistic construction of protected cruisers, stranger pre and inter war designs, and the like.

[arkhangelsk]

6 hours ago, desphex said:

Especialy around the 1920's point in game as you can make mean heavy cruiser (hull) killers out of them that way which kind of upsets the balance. In my perspective, those hulls should be limited to a maximum size of 6 inch guns around 1920 orso.

Well, if such designs can actually give them an advantage under a realistic set of rules, I see no reason to disallow them. It's not like you can't build your own so there is no game balance problem, And trying to get one up on your opponent by loading up a few guns of large size on a relatively small hull ... wait, pocket battleship. 6 (down from 8-10) 11-inch guns ... is perfectly realistic and normal behavior. Do you propose they be banned, too?

[desphex]

I'm not proposing banning pocket battleships, first off pocket battleships weren't all that small in terms of length and beam they where just somewhat less wide then ww1 dreadnoughts, compared to the latest ww2 type capital ships they where dwarfs but so was every other treaty build capital ship aswell.

My main point was the around 60% penalty the so called light cruiser hulls gain when ship hulls bigger then them selfs target them get. Now if it's like Ram said:

On 12/19/2019 at 12:03 PM, RAMJB said:

The in-game "Light cruisers" are intended to represent truly light cruisers. Meaning - oversized destroyer flotilla leaders (a Japanese Nagara, for instance), and very fast scouts (the italian first iterations of the condottieris, or the german SpähKreuzer project). The hulls present there will cover that part of the spectrum: TRUE Light cruisers, those which were light cruisers not only in name, but also in characteristics. For those the bonuses make sense.

Then i dont see the purpose of the 8 (and 7) inch size main guns to be available for em, yes you could place such a gun size on such a ship, but the chance of that ship being the 2nd comming of the hms Captain is pretty large. And if not then look at the 1936A narvik class destroyers they had big (5.9 inch) guns for there class but those guns also caused more then enough troubles, enough that the next series of those destroyers went back to 5 inch guns again.

But all this is besides the point, this post was about what criteria the game differentiation uses between heavy and light cruisers. Now if it's like Ramjb said it is then thas fine with me.

But if this game is suppose to be as close to realistic as possible then the so called "True" light cruisers should no longer have acces to gun sizes above 6 inch from the 1930's onward otherwise the game is no longer realistic. Since in the 1930's the londen naval treaty clearly outlined the diffence between naming a cruiser a heavy or light cruiser, which is that any cruiser with a main gun armement bigger then 6.2 inches is a defacto heavy cruiser.

Thus i'de say that the "True"light cruiser should no longer have acces to 7 or 8 inch guns in the 1930's, to stay true to the so called realistic aspect of the game.

Or the way the game sees and labels what cruiser is what should be altered to gun size recognition and all cruiser hulls be pooled into 1 pool, but this would then again be unfair against the small flotilla leader type cruiser hulls.

Edited December 24, 2019 by desphex

[arkhangelsk]

On 12/24/2019 at 9:29 PM, desphex said:

My main point was the around 60% penalty the so called light cruiser hulls gain when ship hulls bigger then them selfs target them get. Now if it's like Ram said:

Actually, the penalty seems to be size dependent. I was just shooting at a 9100 ton "light cruiser" just now. The penalty was ~30%. a ~15000 ton heavy cruiser was -3%

 

 

Quote

Then i dont see the purpose of the 8 (and 7) inch size main guns to be available for em, yes you could place such a gun size on such a ship, but the chance of that ship being the 2nd comming of the hms Captain is pretty large. And if not then look at the 1936A narvik class destroyers they had big (5.9 inch) guns for there class but those guns also caused more then enough troubles, enough that the next series of those destroyers went back to 5 inch guns again.

BTW, the above was the "Light Cruiser III" hull that's up to 13000 ton. Then there is the Light Cruiser II hull that's 4-7000 ton. There is a Light cruiser I hull too (I suspect RamJB was remembering that one) but unless you unlock you can't touch it in 1930 or even 1920 - by the time you do it seems only singles are available. We may have historical evidence that 5.9" guns are too much for a ~3,500 ton full (2,500 ton standard) displacement hull, but without either historical evidence nor design studies that 8" is unfeasible for a 7k ton hull it is hard to substantiate banning the piece.

The game is meant to be realistic, but not necessarily historical. It does not presume the existence of a treaty, and if there were no treaty and no evidence suggestion guns >6" would have disproportionately deleterious effects, it is difficult to believe people would not arm ships with larger armament.

Edited April 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
Recover quota by deleting attachments

[arkhangelsk]

I went to do some experiments with the hull Light Cruiser II, Year 1925 because that's how far you have to wind the clock back to ensure no radar is allowed. Just optics. First, you need the 4800 ton just to physically be able to put two 8" turrets on.

 

As for its actual ability in game to become a heavy cruiser killer just because I crammed 6 eight inch guns on it, there seems little to worry about. Here is the enemy's design, an 8 inch cruiser, albeit with 15 guns:

 

I did seem to get some advantage from my size, with the hit rate reaching 4% while the enemy's was 3.1. But it is so much tougher and it so outgunned me it did not matter. Soon I was dead in the water and its hit rate climbed to 10%. I was ruled sunk 23 minutes in the game, with it at something like 90% health.

Admittedly, previously I did one with radar, and my ship was more lethal there (though since I didn't design the other ship I have no idea if they had radar). But at least in the equivalent of the Treaty era, where everything is optical, I don't think the heavy cruisers have much to fear from so called "cruiser killers" just as real battleships have little to fear from Graf Spee. Except in the game Atlantic fleet, where you can kill HMS Renown pretty easily with one of the Lutzow class pocket battleships. Full set of photos below:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/P4RXivSGwCoH7stcA

Edited April 5, 2020 by arkhangelsk
Recover quota by deleting attachments

[RAMJB]

On 12/23/2019 at 9:55 PM, desphex said:

I agree for the most part with all of it and certainly can understand the stand and viewpoints of it all, but in my honest opinion being able to put 2 single 8 inch guns on what is called a "True" light cruiser is a bit overkill.

It's really not, because there are historical precedents of it. A couple japanese protected cruisers (the pre-dreadnought era equivalent of the light cruisers) had 8'' guns on displacements of around 4000 tons (Takasago class). One of the ships the japanese captured after the sino-japanese war (Jijuan) displaced 2300 tons, and had a couple 210mm guns. Long story short, there's not a lack of a relevant number of instances of ships that light carrying guns that big here and there.

But the japanese probably take the cake out of it: their Naniwas upped the ante with a couple 10 inch guns and they didn't even displace 3500 tons. So did Izumi (and that one displaced 3000 tons). And it's not as if they were academic instances too - Izumi didn't (was bought too late to participate in the most active part of it) but the Naniwas actually fought as frontliners in a full scale war (the sino-japanese war) and gave a pretty good account of themselves in a full scale fleet engagement as important as the Battle of the Yalu River, amongst others.

The Matsushima class, on a displacement that didn't reach 4500 tons at full displacement, went all up the bonkers category and carried a single 13'' gun. One that could fire once each half hour or so (not kidding) ,but as you can see, going to extremes on light hulls isn't without historical precedents.... yet 8'' guns on light cruisers is not exactly "going to extremes". 8'' guns on light cruisers certainly isn't overkill when we have right here a couple instances of protected cruisers of 3000-3500 tons displacement loading a couple 10'' guns and doing some top-class job in an all out open war as the sino-japanese one was.

The bottom lining is that even if something looks overkill, or ridiculous, it doesn't mean the game shouldn't give you the chance to experiment with it and see why it actually was ridiculous on your own, and understand the reasoning behind it, though. If you want to build a Matsushima, the game should let you do it. And then find out why the idea of a 13'' gun firing each half an hour on a 4000 ton ship was a terrible one XD. As long as the game taxes you for your choices with the correct consequences for going certain "unorthodox" routes, it'll all be perfectly fine with what the game intends to do.


A further thing to clear here is that cruiser development in the interwar era was completely conditioned by the naval treaties, both Washington and London. You might think that something called a "light cruiser" shouldn't have guns bigger than 6 inches...but that's because no light cruiser of the era did. And no light cruiser of the era did because treaties forbade it from happening...

Yet we have very interesting instances of non-signatary navies building quite interesting designs which can't be truthfully classed as anything other than light cruisers with guns quite larger than 6 inches. Like the soviet Kirov - a class that according to the London Treaty would be classed as a heavy cruiser if only because of the 180mm caliber of her main guns - but one with a level of protection that would make many a light cruiser proud.

Another instance? the US Pensacola class. Not widely known but the first 8'' gunned "modern" cruiser the US ever built was designed as, built as, and initially classed as... a light cruiser. While carrying 10x8in guns (and pretty powerful ones at that). The reason?... her armor would make a soda can look like a bunker. But once the London Treaty was signed, enforcing the separation between "heavy" and "light" cruisers based on gun caliber alone, the whole class had to be reclassed. So designed as, built as and initially classed as light cruisers...yet those ships lived the rest of their careers as "heavy cruisers". Because not for any practical reason, but for a bureocratic one (a naval treaty is nothing other than that).

Yet they still were built as light cruisers, and they were comissioned as such. Had no treaty gotten on the way, you'd had a light cruiser with ten 8'' guns. And other navies would've been only too quick in coming back with their own answers to that ship - it's plain to see that in half a decade we'd seen light cruisers with 8'' guns being pretty much the standard. But the London Treaty got in the way, and those ships happened all the same - just labelled as "heavy cruisers" instead. Because of a treaty.


The pointers are clearly out there to show that had no treaty messed up with the natural way things were shaping up for cruisers after WW1, light cruisers would've ended carrying guns quite larger than the standard 6'' the treaties enforced. The British Hawkins class was pretty much a dead giveaway of the trend; that the americans went a step beyond with the Pensacola (10x8in battery in a cruiser is no joke, and I insist, that class was intended to be "light cruisers") is just the clearcut proof of the way things were shaping up for that class.

Another hint we can take from what happened when the treaties stopped being a thing. Once WW2 started and treaty considerations thrown through the window, the trend of heavy cruiser construction was clearcut - suddenly super-cruisers began being a thing. From the japanese B-65 project to the Alaska Class, we can see that the one and only reason "heavy cruisers" of the WW2 era shaped up to be like they were was because naval treaties restricted everyone from upscaling them prior to the war - even while that was exactly which is what everyone wanted to do: making them bigger because 10k tons were just not enough to fill the role they were supposed to fill. And 8'' guns weren't, really, big enough either. 

The de-facto death (or at least discredit) of the Battlecruiser at Jutland, mixed with the later blending of the battlecruiser and battleship into the Fast Battleship of the 30s left a wide open role that some class had to fill. The same one armored cruisers took before the BC was a thing, the same one the BC took when they were a thing, the same one the Heavy Cruiser took because nothing bigger than 10k ton displacement was allowed without being labelled a capital ship by the treaties. That of a fast, heavily armed, reasonably armored, class able to station themselves up at a good distance from the van of the battleline, act as scouting forces, and engage and defeat the enemy's own scouting forces.

That nothing bigger than the "treaty" heavy cruisers took that role before WW2 was, again, because of the treaties. Without those we'd seen "alaskas" or "B-65s" way before: ships labelled as cruisers but displacing almost as much as a WW1 battleships, armed with guns of 10,11, 12 inches of caliber or even more. The Naval Armaments agreement at Washington didn't happen just to put a leash on capital ship building - it very specifically targetted cruisers aswell because those were also felt that without check, would grow out very quickly into something very different, far more powerful (and far costlier) than what the WT and London Treaty ended up enforcing.

Without those treaties the "heavy cruiser" would've never existed. Certainly not in the way and shape it did. They'd ended up being what today we know as "supercruisers", but 20 years earlier.

and in a world like that "light cruisers" with 8'' guns certainly don't look unreasonable at all. They didn't look unreasonable in 1930 when USS Pensacola and USS Salt Lake City were comissioned as such, after all. Did they? ;).

Edited January 9, 2020 by RAMJB

[Cptbarney]

Size, gun caliber, tonnage, role (to some extent), technology and weridness of the nation at hand (if any).

[DougToss]

I think the game should be able to account for players using calibers that for whatever reason were not popular historically. Specifically, 7", 9" and 10" guns. I don't see why a light cruiser couldn't be built with 7" guns, or why a heavy cruiser could not have 10". 

I don't know how good they would be. There is surely a reason those calibers were not common, but it should be up to the players to find out if say 7" guns are too unwieldy or can't have the shells handled by hand on a protected cruiser or used in super-firing double mounts on a light cruiser or what a Brooklyn class light cruiser with 5x2 10" would be like, and if that is in fact still a light cruiser. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by DougToss

[akd]

There are two problems that we already dealt with when 6" guns were allowed on destroyers:

1. The AI was hugely prone to picking them, so 6" became the norm rather than extremely rare as it was in reality (other than on some destroyers that were borderline light cruisers).

2. The current system of gun mounting does not account for the particularities of the hull it is mounted on:

• mounting a 6-inch gun on destroyer would have a much greater effect on total weight than mounting the same on a battleship.  The hull would require substantial and costly reinforcement that would exponentially increase the weight of the installation.
• Ammunition handling and hand-training a 6-inch gun on destroyer would become nearly impossible in adverse conditions where at the same time a battleship installation might only be moderately effected.

That said, I do find many gun mounting restrictions arbitrary and unnecessarily constraining to design choice.  For example, on all the light cruiser hulls, you can mount 4-inch and greater pedestal or turreted guns, you can mount 2 or 3-inch casemate guns, but you can't place a 2 or 3-inch pedestal gun anywhere on the hull because it is not selectable under main guns (probably to keep the AI from selecting these as mains), but there are not secondary options except for the hugely limited casemates.  This funnels you into a much narrower selection of armament than would otherwise be both feasible and reflective of what was done on the direct historical counterparts of these hulls.  With some proper scaling of effects and downsides for various hulls, I would also like to see things opened up even further as you suggest.

Edited January 10, 2020 by akd

[DougToss]

1 hour ago, akd said:

mounting a 6-inch gun on destroyer would have a much greater effect on total weight than mounting the same on a battleship.  The hull would require substantial and costly reinforcement that would exponentially increase the weight of the installation.

Exactly. If people want to build "Gun" destroyers like the Tribals, I say they should go for it, but the design considerations should be taken into account. Hell, if people want to try "Big-Gun" destroyers with 4x1 8", I think they should be allowed to see how impractical, top-heavy, expensive and awkward that design is.

Something I liked to do in RTW every once in a while was to put casemates on destroyers. I'd like to be able to do that and see just how ridiculous it looks here.

1 hour ago, akd said:

Ammunition handling and hand-training a 6-inch gun on destroyer would become nearly impossible in adverse conditions where at the same time a battleship installation might only be moderately effected.

Handling 155mm shells is hard enough on a howitzer with spades dug in. I can't imagine doing it on a destroyer, especially considering the seakeeping qualities of WWI British destroyers and how wet they tended to be. It's important that be conveyed, especially when players are deciding on that range of 4" - 7" guns were things go from easy  stowage in ready-use lockers and light, easy to handle fixed  or separate quick firing ammunition to accessible magazines storing bagged charges and much heavier, harder to handle projectiles to 165lb projectiles that require mechanical handling (Although Friedman says it was considered the heaviest one man could handle alone, I would be interested to see how they did that on a ship, especially since men were smaller back then). 

1 hour ago, akd said:

That said, I do find many gun mounting restrictions arbitrary and unnecessarily constraining to design choice.  For example, on all the light cruiser hulls, you can mount 4-inch and greater pedestal or turreted guns, you can mount 2 or 3-inch casemate guns, but you can't place a 2 or 3-inch pedestal gun anywhere on the hull because it is not selectable under main guns (probably to keep the AI from selecting these as mains), but there are not secondary options except for the hugely limited casemates.  This funnels you into a much narrower selection of armament than would otherwise be both feasible and reflective of what was done on the direct historical counterparts of these hulls.  With some proper scaling of effects and downsides for various hulls, I would also like to see things opened up even further as you suggest.

Finally, this is where I think attention should be placed in ship design. Opening up turret, barbette and casemate placement would be a step forward both in allowing creative player designs, and reproducing historical ships. If a rework for full-freedom will take a while, adding more preset points in the time being would be a step forward - at the risk of being accused of plagiarism  😉

Just being able to have the F+K and G+J positions for turrets and the 1 and 2 positions really opens things up. In RTW I'll occasionally put cross-firing guns on destroyers and protected cruisers before centreline armaments are available to increase the weight of broadside, but there are obviously reasons this wasn't done and I ought to have to deal with the consequences.