Cruisers

[Evangeline Anovilis]

So, although I may no longer have a nation, I do want to address one last point. Especially given I no longer got a nation, I actually can address that point, without being somewhat hypocritical. And this point is, like so many other things I complained about in the last few months, a naval one.

 

Cruisers - the type of ships that is pretty much everything between battleship and destroyer, even alphabetically. They are an unclear class pretty much like destroyers, in that noone has any clear idea what is appropriate and noone wants to set up limits, for whatever reason. The issue with cruisers in CNRP is pretty much a product of destroyer flexibility, which has allowed for incredible destroyer designs, such as MGLs 256-VLS destroyers (pretty much the upper extreme to be mass-produced in the last few years), Triyun's heavy destroyers of I think ~180 missiles, Triyuns more moderate destroyers of ~120 VLS and my answers to that in the Kitakami-class of 176 missiles (and planned additions in the range of 160 VLS). Thanks to MGL being gone now, the destroyers are now mostly somewhat reasonable at 90-120 with no single nation I know fielding a fleet entirely of 160-180 missile destroyers, which are pretty much universally seen as "heavy destroyers".

 

But this isn't about destroyers (because noone wants to argue about destroyers, I learned), it is about cruisers. Because thanks to these numbers, cruisers of course need to adjust. There's little point in using cruiser slots for a guided missile cruiser like the Ticonderoga or Slava, if it is outclassed by other navies' heavy destroyers (which count as destroyers). Because while destroyers get a multiplier, cruisers do not. The product is, that cruisers, who historically have been pretty much anything between a battleship and a destroyer, tend to pretty much become miniature versions of battleships, not so much enlarged destroyers. So they are more battlecruisers and less light cruisers or heavy cruisers. I personally always used cruisers for battlecruiser capabilities, because if the multiplier does not apply to cruisers, they are treated as capital ships and it is only logical that they get maximised.

 

But I think there shouldn't necessarily be a dynamic that pushes people to just treat cruisers always only as smaller battleships, especially given that IRL, most cruisers are of the upped destroyer variant. I thus suggest that the naval multiplier brackets for non-capital ships be expanded to cruisers in the following compromise:

 

Naval Rules
Your in-game navy is directly used in CNRP. Meaning, whatever you have IG = whatever you have in RP. The sole exception applies to submarines, corvettes, frigates, destroyers and cruisers (below 15,000 tons).

The current naval multiplier rule when converting from IG to IC fleets is as follows:
0-4,000 Infra, 0-500 tech: x2, cruisers x1
4,001-5,000 Infra, 501-1,000 tech: x3, cruisers x2
5,001-6,000 Infra, 1,001-2,000 tech: x4, cruisers x3
6,001-infinity Infra, 2,001-infinity: x5, cruisers x4

 

If you're in different brackets for tech and infra, go with the lower one.

 

The 15,000 ton limit is something I made up as a qualitative line. If others got better suggestions, feel free to bring them up. But I think with a line like this, people who want to use more lighter cruisers, akin to what currently are heavy destroyers, have greater reason to do so, people who rather utilise their cruisers as smaller battleships, can just keep the non-multiplied current version. also, cruisers don't multiply as much as the rest, because if they'd be multiplied by standard multipliers, nations would have more cruisers than either frigates or destroyers.

[Triyun]

I'd say a couple things.  First cruisers in the modern sense aren't cruisers in the technical sense of the word.

 

A cruiser as they were designated a commerce raider to go ahead of and engage nation's lines of commerce, while battlefleets made up of battleships were designated to  Battleships were unassailable because of speed and gun range making it difficult for any other ship to close, and bigger guns able to tear ships apart before they got close.  Today battleships do not exist (though crucially battle fleets do).  The last gasp of battleships was not about being battle fleets but about force projection ashore with shore bombardment.

 

So what is a cruiser in the modern sense?  A cruiser is about air defense.  They took up roles defending the workhorses of the new battle fleet the carrier group.  Originally large cruisers were important because they could fit a lot of guns, and can almost try to keep up with carriers (which can leave every other ship in a lurch, especially when at flank speed launching planes.

 

Today we have a more kinematically diverse threat profile requiring more complex and numerous defending objects and radar.  Take away a CIWS which is not very useful, and more about a last ditch, and you have one off missiles.  Missiles designed to defeat ballistic vectored objects are not going to be able to defeat cruise missile objects, and vice versa.  Additionally, mid-altitude aircraft which can engage in much more complex evasion because of an onboard pilot are equally hard.  You also can only steer your radars in so many directions in a 3 dimensional sense.  This means larger vessels are necessary.

 

This is why the United States which is the only nation with a real battle fleet has destroyers that are so much bigger than anyone else except for nation's who are literally copying our destroyers such as the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese (albiet without permission) models.  The size of these warships goes up even within the class because of this problem.  

 

Additionally the line is now blurred between surface combatants and what is what.  Because increases in computing power have allowed specialized sensors to do more individual missions (though crucially in serial not parellell), the line between frigate and destroyer + destroyer and cruiser is largely blurred.

 

I say all this to make the point that a cap doesn't make much sense.  The first zumwalt is nearing 15000 tons, my guess is others may go over that, we'll see what the Type 55 looks like when its put to sea.  

 

I think the problem is trying to apply a 19th early 20th century lexicon, to a 21st century world where the nature of navies and how to conceive of them is fundamentally different, and names aside from carriers, even between missile and attack subs are distinctions without differences and you need to think about the fleet as an integrated network not individual platforms.

[Evangeline Anovilis]

Well, the suggestion is not so much a general cap, than an attempt to make it more encouraging for people to actually build smaller cruisers, instead of just maximising them. Because while your points are valid, the cruiser in CNRP is hardly going to be the main air defense ship when it is limited to ~6-12 ships for most people. That's why people use heavy destroyers, like MGL's 256 VLS destroyers, the Jade Emperor-class or the Kitakami-class that are providing the missiles and sensoric systems necessary for these tasks (as well as naval gunfire support).

 

Cruisers in CNRP are more like battleships, a class that gets modernised and possibly repurposed to whatever the person in charge thinks would work best. Because, as mentioned, traditional battleships are no longer too useful and the cruiser is replacable in its role by heavy destroyers. If you were to go for 21st century naval warfare, you'd most likely just get rid of battleships and cruisers as they currently exist and exchange them for greater number of heavier destroyers. The reason CNRP builds large battleships is not because it is an economically sensible concept IRL, but because we are per the rules allowed to have them, so we are likely going to make sure we use them. And as we build them, we like to make sure to make them useful.

 

If I had to work with an actual budget and decide whether to spend the money I IC spent on the battleships and battlecruisers of Japan, I'd rather spend it on an increased number of Kitakamis or a follow-on class based on it (given I do continually refine my designs, as I find faults and correct them). They provide the missiles, their greater number makes them more flexible, more survivable and increases the amount of sensorics searching for threats. The guns may be smaller, but 155 mm and 203 mm are decent and overall it's not worth building a huge ship just for the guns. Could as well build a monitor, if I really think I ever need that capability. And while the heavy destroyer lacks in armour, it is armored well enough to defeat machine cannon fire from small gunboats, while any major ship will hardly be engaged in a gunnery duel and the counter to missiles are other missiles, not just loads of armour (well, armour can do a good job at keeping low-end missiles from doing any critical damage and traditional sturdy battleship design does allow for battleships to survive a few hits, but active defenses still are the modern main line of defense).

 

As you said, in the 21st century, like in the centuries before, we do struggle to uniformly classify ships, but that's because decisionmaking is influenced by budget and capabilities (what bang do I get for the buck?), not by classes (Whether a ship is a frigate, destroyer or cruiser, it still is a certain number of arms installed on a hull of a certain size with certain sensorics and certain propulsion giving an overall amount of a certain capability for a certain price). Which is why we can somewhat share our views on what a carrier is, what a submarine is, what battleships are (due to being the largest surface combattants), what corvettes are (smallest surface combattants with limited open sea capability of 1,000-2,500 tons roughly, with a very limited number of missiles and most likely one proper naval gun, hardly going to fit the sensoric systems and missiles for anything but anti-air point defense), but frigates, destroyers and cruisers are a continuous type of ship from ~3,000-15,000 tons (IRL, higher in the RP), that can carry a wide variety of systems for a wide variety of roles.

 

I would say, battleship is an obsolete classification and cruiser is more a honorary acknowledgement, rather than a meaningful descriptive classification. I for my part gave up on using battleships and cruisers in any actual modern role, for which I use the vast assortment of different destroyers and destroyer escorts, and rather grouped them together to be either used as a massive bulk or to be reassigned as I see fit, but without clear purpose whatsoever. They are pretty much organised like a WWI/WWII-era battlefleet that would fight in a battle line and the sole use they really ever had was in the war with MGL, where these ships were at first just staying in reserve (because losing them carelessly would be a waste), then as heavy gunfire support and limited escort duties for the carriers. Compared to destroyers, CNRP battleships and cruisers are maybe not a class fully useless or harmless, but definitely a class that is not essential and is existent more due to the rules than actual necessity.

 

And the proposal tries to acknowledge this ambivalence, by keeping the system practically the same as is, with the sole difference being, if you actually decide to build smaller more economically sound ships, then it's tied to a multiplier giving the option of replacing some larger cruisers for a good number of lighter cruisers that are more in line with modern doctrine. Maybe one can raise that cap for the multiplier to 20,000 tons, but well. In the end, even with a rule change, if you think your current naval make-up is good as is, you can just keep it that way. It isn't a general cap for all cruisers, just for the ones applicable to a multiplier.