"LIGHT CRUISERS" are BAD HISTORY. Heavy & light cruisers ought to be merged into a single class

[neph]

The distinction between hulls is arbitrary & prevents design creativity, particularly with the constraints of armor & armament on "light cruisers". The two classes ought to be merged.

Now, you might say, this is madness. What blasphemy! Cruisers have always come in "heavy" & "light"--surely you don't want to throw history out the window??

Ah, but there you are, my thoughtful reader. There existed absolutely no distinction between cruiser types until as late as 1930. To distinguish the classes before this is pure fiction.

But what happened in the year 1930? Why, the London Naval Treaty happened! Let me back up a bit: back in the 1920s, the Washington Naval Treaty said that all warships which weren't a battleship or carrier may have no more than 8" guns & 10,000 tons of standard displacement. Also, the Washington Naval Treaty said you couldn't build any battleships for 15ish years. Of course, everybody immediately began building 8", 10,000 ton cruisers to effect foreign policy & protect trade routes. However... it's worth noting that a 10,000 ton cruiser can really only have either 8" guns OR substantial armor, and everybody picked the former. Keep that in mind.

Okay, so what about the London Naval Treaty? At the London Naval Treaty, cruisers were arbitrarily divided into "heavy" and "light" cruisers--with no prior basis for this division! "Heavy" cruisers were newly defined to be those with 8" guns, and "light" cruisers were defined to be those with 6.1" guns or smaller! Why the distinction? Because the treaty placed limits on how many heavy cruisers signatories could build, but no restriction whatsoever on the number of light cruisers. (Both had total displacement limits.) Side note: at this point, "destroyers" were also official defined as those ships with smaller than 5.1" guns and less than ~2,000 tons standard displacement. Anyways, everybody started building light cruisers because although undergunned, 6.1" light cruisers were more than capable of crippling the lightly armored "heavy" 10,000 ton cruisers, and they could build as many as they wanted.

So what's the point? The point is that all the wargames that you know and love  use this arbitrary historical terminology which barely existed before the treaties were signed. That's great for WoWS or whatever, but the UAD universe is one which very explicitly does not have naval arms reduction treaties. Why do you think you're building 80,000 ton behemoths in 1932 & 120,000 ton leviathans in 1940? Why do you think everything has 18" or 20" guns? Because the joy of UAD is a world without the arbitrary restrictions of history.

Then why are we restricted by naval treaty nonsense with the small ships? Why do light cruisers exist? Their role: of being heavy cruiser killers & large torpedo sleds without the numerical limits of heavy cruisers or the displacement limits of destroyers, does not exist in the UAD world! Before the treaty limits, "heavy" cruisers and "light" cruisers all existed along an uninhibited spectrum, allowed to exist as the designer desired. The limitations: that I can't put 12" guns on a "heavy cruiser, or that I can't put 9" guns or more than 6" of armor on a "light cruiser", is all silly.

Get rid of the restrictions and let us design freely!

[Littorio]

I agree, but in order for this to work there will have to be a substantial increase in cruiser weapon options such as larger casemate guns for earlier ships, and shield mounts bigger than 4". As it stands right now, opening up the spectrum would be gimped by the turret-centric designs that you are forced to build and that the AI especially loves. Basically, a lot more weapons will need to be added as well as hulls, or at least substantially tweaked, in order for this to be maximally useful.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Littorio

[German CL mk II guns]

I want protected cruisers, I want belted cruisers, I want auxiliary cruisers, I want them all. gunboats, sloops, avisos, everything 

Edited February 17, 2022 by Terminus Est

[Grayknight]

Unleass we get game with modular design like naval architect i am afraid this is simply impossible. But I may be wrong. Over all i agree with you but in this case (very specific case) i think that in fact more classes should be added then merged. Prehaps there will be more hulls and with ship designer expansions things will change blending those two. For now they are far to distinct in the way they look/work/feel to be able to merge those.

[Candle_86]

There was distinction prior to 1930, you had Protected Crusiers and Armored Cruisers, Protected turned into Heavy/Light and Armored turned into Battlecruiser which got a little to friendly with the battleship and birthed the fast battleship. 

[neph]

5 hours ago, Candle_86 said:

There was distinction prior to 1930, you had Protected Crusiers and Armored Cruisers, Protected turned into Heavy/Light and Armored turned into Battlecruiser which got a little to friendly with the battleship and birthed the fast battleship. 

Excellent summary!

[Lastreaumont]

And if all of this was just a question about names? 
As far as I'm concerned, game design classes are just design classes. I care about their names just as guidelines, not about historical meaning or role of ships designed with. I choose one or another depending of their available options for the ship I want to have. 
If the light cruiser I want to create must be a heavy cruiser for the game, no problem, I build her with the heavy cruiser design class but for me she remains a light cruiser. 
Problems may come when the game will consider specific ships roles corresponding to their game design classes. But now it doesn't seem to be the case. 

[disc]

The term "light cruiser" did become popular around the time of WWI. The later Towns were called light armoured cruisers, and the name was shortened soon to just light cruiser during (maybe a little before?) the war.

"Heavy cruiser" was actually a term that was used to describe big cruisers by around 1900, especially in contrast to small "scout cruisers." I don't know the earliest mention, but I've seen it in the 1903 Brassey's and in an 1894 publication. "Light cruiser" is at least as old a term.

Officially, there were many variations on names, but a common scheme was three or four "classes" of cruiser based on size, with 1st class being the biggest and 3rd/4th being the smallest. Some protected cruisers were indeed extremely large, and some small ones had absurdly big guns.

Edited February 19, 2022 by disc

[The PC Collector]

On 2/17/2022 at 8:39 AM, neph said:

The distinction between hulls is arbitrary & prevents design creativity, particularly with the constraints of armor & armament on "light cruisers". The two classes ought to be merged.

Now, you might say, this is madness. What blasphemy! Cruisers have always come in "heavy" & "light"--surely you don't want to throw history out the window??

Ah, but there you are, my thoughtful reader. There existed absolutely no distinction between cruiser types until as late as 1930. To distinguish the classes before this is pure fiction.

But what happened in the year 1930? Why, the London Naval Treaty happened! Let me back up a bit: back in the 1920s, the Washington Naval Treaty said that all warships which weren't a battleship or carrier may have no more than 8" guns & 10,000 tons of standard displacement. Also, the Washington Naval Treaty said you couldn't build any battleships for 15ish years. Of course, everybody immediately began building 8", 10,000 ton cruisers to effect foreign policy & protect trade routes. However... it's worth noting that a 10,000 ton cruiser can really only have either 8" guns OR substantial armor, and everybody picked the former. Keep that in mind.

Okay, so what about the London Naval Treaty? At the London Naval Treaty, cruisers were arbitrarily divided into "heavy" and "light" cruisers--with no prior basis for this division! "Heavy" cruisers were newly defined to be those with 8" guns, and "light" cruisers were defined to be those with 6.1" guns or smaller! Why the distinction? Because the treaty placed limits on how many heavy cruisers signatories could build, but no restriction whatsoever on the number of light cruisers. (Both had total displacement limits.) Side note: at this point, "destroyers" were also official defined as those ships with smaller than 5.1" guns and less than ~2,000 tons standard displacement. Anyways, everybody started building light cruisers because although undergunned, 6.1" light cruisers were more than capable of crippling the lightly armored "heavy" 10,000 ton cruisers, and they could build as many as they wanted.

So what's the point? The point is that all the wargames that you know and love  use this arbitrary historical terminology which barely existed before the treaties were signed. That's great for WoWS or whatever, but the UAD universe is one which very explicitly does not have naval arms reduction treaties. Why do you think you're building 80,000 ton behemoths in 1932 & 120,000 ton leviathans in 1940? Why do you think everything has 18" or 20" guns? Because the joy of UAD is a world without the arbitrary restrictions of history.

Then why are we restricted by naval treaty nonsense with the small ships? Why do light cruisers exist? Their role: of being heavy cruiser killers & large torpedo sleds without the numerical limits of heavy cruisers or the displacement limits of destroyers, does not exist in the UAD world! Before the treaty limits, "heavy" cruisers and "light" cruisers all existed along an uninhibited spectrum, allowed to exist as the designer desired. The limitations: that I can't put 12" guns on a "heavy cruiser, or that I can't put 9" guns or more than 6" of armor on a "light cruiser", is all silly.

Get rid of the restrictions and let us design freely!

In that... you're pretty much wrong. Ships classified as Light Cruisers are documented as early as the mid 1890s, as it was the name that the old unprotected cruisers took. And the split existed: There were light cruisers, and protected cruisers. The differences is that protected cruisers traded speed for armour instead of heavier weaponry, so they will be our light and heavy cruisers here. Another, completely different thing, is that Armoured Cruisers should be classified as Battlecruisers rather than Heavy cruisers for game mechanics, as Armoured cruisers were much closer to battlecruisers than to heavy cruisers.

[Captain Basilone]

I'd have to say no to this idea. With diplomacy now being added to the game, it should be considered that the hard level on campaign might start with Washington Treaty style limits in place. Of course after the campaign starts better ships can be designed but one would have to deal with the existing subpar cruisers. 

[Spitfire_97]

I think we are kind of forgetting that ship designations as a whole are completely arbitrary. The line between fast battleship and battlecruiser never had a singular historical definition, each nation had their own delineations, most notably the British calling anything faster than the battle line a battlecruiser even if it had equivalent armour to it's armament. The line between light and heavy cruiser would be much the same in a world without treaties. But you have to draw the line somewhere, for the sake of gameplay. I think the current system works well for splitting cruisers by role, light cruisers being anti-destroyer ships and heavy cruisers being anti-cruiser ships

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

While I understand the sentiment and thought process behind getting rid of cruiser "classes," I ultimately think that for the sake of gameplay nothing should change...apart from adding more hulls, gun and tower models, etc. Because when it comes down to it, you will basically have two groups of players: the history buffs and your average joe. For the history buffs, they'll know about how cruisers were/weren't grouped and what constitutes a "heavy" or "light" cruiser and build whatever they want. Your average joe on the other hand, will likely just see two separate classes of ships: one that is smaller, faster and carries smaller guns while the other one is bigger, usually slower and carries bigger guns...and they'll build whatever they want. Both approaches are fine and I don't think it would do much in the way of productivity or making this game "better" per se.

But I also want to bring up another case of "what ship class do I belong to?" starring everyone's favorite gun buckets from the US Navy: the Atlanta class. They were built as destroyer/flotilla leaders, given destroyer size guns AND torpedoes, but were the size and speed of "light cruisers" and eventually found their place in the "anti-aircraft cruiser" role. So...what do you classify the Atlantas as? Giant Destroyers, Destroyer/Flotilla leaders, light cruisers, AA cruisers or something else entirely? A ship's designed purpose as well as the design philosophies/doctrines of the nations that designed them can play a large role in what a ship is "classified" as.

[neph]

On 2/21/2022 at 10:34 AM, Spitfire_97 said:

I think we are kind of forgetting that ship designations as a whole are completely arbitrary. The line between fast battleship and battlecruiser never had a singular historical definition, each nation had their own delineations, most notably the British calling anything faster than the battle line a battlecruiser even if it had equivalent armour to it's armament. The line between light and heavy cruiser would be much the same in a world without treaties. But you have to draw the line somewhere, for the sake of gameplay. I think the current system works well for splitting cruisers by role, light cruisers being anti-destroyer ships and heavy cruisers being anti-cruiser ships

(my next rant would be about the continuous late-time continuum from fast battleships to battlecruiser to heavy cruiser)

[Candle_86]

On 2/21/2022 at 11:07 AM, HistoricalAccuracyMan said:

But I also want to bring up another case of "what ship class do I belong to?" starring everyone's favorite gun buckets from the US Navy: the Atlanta class. They were built as destroyer/flotilla leaders, given destroyer size guns AND torpedoes, but were the size and speed of "light cruisers" and eventually found their place in the "anti-aircraft cruiser" role. So...what do you classify the Atlantas as? Giant Destroyers, Destroyer/Flotilla leaders, light cruisers, AA cruisers or something else entirely? A ship's designed purpose as well as the design philosophies/doctrines of the nations that designed them can play a large role in what a ship is "classified" as.

I call it ahead of its time and realizing what the end game role for a crusier would be as seen by the Ticonderoga Class, which honestly would fare poorly ship v ship but is deadly to aircraft, built on a destroyer hull