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Stevan,
I'm aware TASM is currently dead...but so are the battleships, like two are museums and two are in Class B Inactive Reserve. They're similarly dead as a coffin-nail ("never understood why they always said 'door-nail' - I always felt a coffin nail was more dead"
)
As for the comparison, you'd be surprised. I'm in fact describing a second-generation Spruance 'can, not a Burke.
But let's go with Harpoon 1C. My point is that the missile strikes above the armour belt, so the battleship's armour becomes completely irrelevant. However non-innovative the missile's flight path is, it still doesn't look anything like a shell's, and even though it's subsonic, Phalanx can't stop more than one or two.
What's the range of Harpoon 1C? Well, the Navy gives it as >60 nautical miles. I'll go with that. What's the range of the 16"/50's? Barely a third that at about 20 nautical miles. The destroyer does not need to, and will not, get into range. I mentioned the directors simply because the BB's link to its Predator unmanned drone will be cut by the first missile to strike it, disabling all of its radar and radio antennae.
The AGS is meant for fire support, not ships going gun-to-gun on the high seas again. The time of flight on ERGM is something like 7-9 MINUTES and it's only ever been recorded to have a 61 nautical mile range. Plus, after the first 20 rounds, severe degradation of the barrel occurs, forcing a reduction in fire rate and necessitating a barrel change. These problems have not yet been resolved, they're simply expecting them to be by 2006 or so. Note that ERGM was to have been operational by 2002 but the aforementioned problems with the barrel were not satisfactorily addressed. In modern ship-to-ship combat, forget the guns. It's that simple.
Battleships aren't really overkill, but it depends on your definition. For one thing, they're painfully inaccurate, with a CEP of about 50 yards, IIRC. Secondly, they can't deliver as much explosive power as a carrier can. I don't recall where I last saw the math, but one carrier and its airwing on average deliver ten times the weight of fire in the same time. Carriers certainly aren't the new capital ship because they're cheap alternatives to battleships! (Compare the cost of a new CVN to $100 million to run one battleship for five years)
TrailerParkJawa,
Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates have designed modularity and compartmentalization. They deal with damage in a different way than battleships. It also didn't hurt that the men of the Stark performed some excellent damage control.
Venger,
You dont need to take out an Iowa class. Remove the radar and radio antennae and you win, since it can't fire its own missiles, talk to its Predator to fire its own missiles, or do anything other than flail its guns in the air. And yes, given enough missiles you WILL take out an Iowa class, simply because they'll strike all around the armour belt, they won't conform to the deflection standards built into the armour (intended to deflect shells) and they'll generally wreak havoc on all the parts of the BB that aren't guarded by a foot of steel, which just happens to be a large part of the superstructure.
Karhgath,
I think that if, in Civ style, we limit ourselves to major combatants, it doesn't need to get too crazy. Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Carrier, Submarine to form the WWII group. Assuming that the Ironclad, which is the only unit we can use before as a comparison, remains 4.4.4 (4).1.2 and 80 shields....
DD ~ 8.8.8 (8).1.2 90 (assuming some sort of Gearing/Sumner type thing...6x5"/38)
CA ~ 14.14.8 (12).1.3 120(Baltimore approximation...9x8"/55)
BB ~ 42.42.8 (24).2.4 280 (Iowa approximation 9x16"/50)
CV ~ 8.8.8 (8).1.2 carry4 200 (Essex approx....12x5"/38)
SS ~ 14.8.5 100 (something Barbel and Tang like)
Advances to gain these ships would probably be Refining, Combustion, Mass Production, Flight, Combustion.
The reason why surface ship AD has to be the same is because it really doesn't matter in naval battle who's attacking who first - you see each other from miles out of range and both have a pretty good idea of what to do.
Modern Age then would be composed of Missile Destroyer, Missile (AEGIS) Cruiser, Supercarrier, Nuclear Fast-Attack Submarine.
DDG ~ 64.64.8 (4).1.2 200 (Using as the base the Spruance 'can)
CG ~ 70.70.8 (4).1.2 220 (Ticonderoga base)
CVN ~ 0.6.8 carry12 240 (Nimitz)
SSN ~ 72.24.8 200 (688I or Seawolf)
Advances necessary here, for balance purposes, would be Space Flight (the modern DDG doesn't actually show up before 1969), Robotics, Robotics, and Smart Weapons.
Then again, I'm weighing in extremely heavily on the realism side here, and against the game balance side. While the 64.64.8 DDG will thrash the 8.8.8 WWII DD as it should (the WWII DD having no antimissile defence and no missiles) the game implications of a nine or so tech advantage translating into a unit with that much power could be...overwhelming. So don't take this seriously.
I think the major points that really break the possibility of a "good" naval system is that the Defence value must be the same against air, sea, or submarine. That, and that ships can bombard other ships, which is somewhat odd...but livable if the bombard value didn't have to count for both sea and ground.
Just as matters of minor note: AEGIS cruisers are actually not bigger or significantly more heavily armed than destroyers. In fact, the Spruance destroyer and the Ticonderoga AEGIS cruiser are built off the same base, and effectively differ only in the number of SAMs they carry (and the presence of the AEGIS computer/SPY radar, but newer missile destroyers i.e. the Japanese Kongo and American Burke classes make up that deficiency somewhat). An amusing note is that the Destroyer unit, since it looks like a Spruance, looks very similar to an AEGIS cruiser (Ticonderoga) while the AEGIS cruiser unit itself depicts a Burke (a destroyer). Anyway, the CG's greater number of SAMs gives it a slight edge in combat, but not that much of one.
-Sev
I'm aware TASM is currently dead...but so are the battleships, like two are museums and two are in Class B Inactive Reserve. They're similarly dead as a coffin-nail ("never understood why they always said 'door-nail' - I always felt a coffin nail was more dead"
)As for the comparison, you'd be surprised. I'm in fact describing a second-generation Spruance 'can, not a Burke.
But let's go with Harpoon 1C. My point is that the missile strikes above the armour belt, so the battleship's armour becomes completely irrelevant. However non-innovative the missile's flight path is, it still doesn't look anything like a shell's, and even though it's subsonic, Phalanx can't stop more than one or two.
What's the range of Harpoon 1C? Well, the Navy gives it as >60 nautical miles. I'll go with that. What's the range of the 16"/50's? Barely a third that at about 20 nautical miles. The destroyer does not need to, and will not, get into range. I mentioned the directors simply because the BB's link to its Predator unmanned drone will be cut by the first missile to strike it, disabling all of its radar and radio antennae.
The AGS is meant for fire support, not ships going gun-to-gun on the high seas again. The time of flight on ERGM is something like 7-9 MINUTES and it's only ever been recorded to have a 61 nautical mile range. Plus, after the first 20 rounds, severe degradation of the barrel occurs, forcing a reduction in fire rate and necessitating a barrel change. These problems have not yet been resolved, they're simply expecting them to be by 2006 or so. Note that ERGM was to have been operational by 2002 but the aforementioned problems with the barrel were not satisfactorily addressed. In modern ship-to-ship combat, forget the guns. It's that simple.
Battleships aren't really overkill, but it depends on your definition. For one thing, they're painfully inaccurate, with a CEP of about 50 yards, IIRC. Secondly, they can't deliver as much explosive power as a carrier can. I don't recall where I last saw the math, but one carrier and its airwing on average deliver ten times the weight of fire in the same time. Carriers certainly aren't the new capital ship because they're cheap alternatives to battleships! (Compare the cost of a new CVN to $100 million to run one battleship for five years)
TrailerParkJawa,
Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates have designed modularity and compartmentalization. They deal with damage in a different way than battleships. It also didn't hurt that the men of the Stark performed some excellent damage control.
Venger,
You dont need to take out an Iowa class. Remove the radar and radio antennae and you win, since it can't fire its own missiles, talk to its Predator to fire its own missiles, or do anything other than flail its guns in the air. And yes, given enough missiles you WILL take out an Iowa class, simply because they'll strike all around the armour belt, they won't conform to the deflection standards built into the armour (intended to deflect shells) and they'll generally wreak havoc on all the parts of the BB that aren't guarded by a foot of steel, which just happens to be a large part of the superstructure.
Karhgath,
I think that if, in Civ style, we limit ourselves to major combatants, it doesn't need to get too crazy. Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Carrier, Submarine to form the WWII group. Assuming that the Ironclad, which is the only unit we can use before as a comparison, remains 4.4.4 (4).1.2 and 80 shields....
DD ~ 8.8.8 (8).1.2 90 (assuming some sort of Gearing/Sumner type thing...6x5"/38)
CA ~ 14.14.8 (12).1.3 120(Baltimore approximation...9x8"/55)
BB ~ 42.42.8 (24).2.4 280 (Iowa approximation 9x16"/50)
CV ~ 8.8.8 (8).1.2 carry4 200 (Essex approx....12x5"/38)
SS ~ 14.8.5 100 (something Barbel and Tang like)
Advances to gain these ships would probably be Refining, Combustion, Mass Production, Flight, Combustion.
The reason why surface ship AD has to be the same is because it really doesn't matter in naval battle who's attacking who first - you see each other from miles out of range and both have a pretty good idea of what to do.
Modern Age then would be composed of Missile Destroyer, Missile (AEGIS) Cruiser, Supercarrier, Nuclear Fast-Attack Submarine.
DDG ~ 64.64.8 (4).1.2 200 (Using as the base the Spruance 'can)
CG ~ 70.70.8 (4).1.2 220 (Ticonderoga base)
CVN ~ 0.6.8 carry12 240 (Nimitz)
SSN ~ 72.24.8 200 (688I or Seawolf)
Advances necessary here, for balance purposes, would be Space Flight (the modern DDG doesn't actually show up before 1969), Robotics, Robotics, and Smart Weapons.
Then again, I'm weighing in extremely heavily on the realism side here, and against the game balance side. While the 64.64.8 DDG will thrash the 8.8.8 WWII DD as it should (the WWII DD having no antimissile defence and no missiles) the game implications of a nine or so tech advantage translating into a unit with that much power could be...overwhelming. So don't take this seriously.
I think the major points that really break the possibility of a "good" naval system is that the Defence value must be the same against air, sea, or submarine. That, and that ships can bombard other ships, which is somewhat odd...but livable if the bombard value didn't have to count for both sea and ground.
Just as matters of minor note: AEGIS cruisers are actually not bigger or significantly more heavily armed than destroyers. In fact, the Spruance destroyer and the Ticonderoga AEGIS cruiser are built off the same base, and effectively differ only in the number of SAMs they carry (and the presence of the AEGIS computer/SPY radar, but newer missile destroyers i.e. the Japanese Kongo and American Burke classes make up that deficiency somewhat). An amusing note is that the Destroyer unit, since it looks like a Spruance, looks very similar to an AEGIS cruiser (Ticonderoga) while the AEGIS cruiser unit itself depicts a Burke (a destroyer). Anyway, the CG's greater number of SAMs gives it a slight edge in combat, but not that much of one.
-Sev
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