Matrix Games Forums

Aside from a kind of historical flavor (somehow? They are harder to maintain?), why? The BC is slightly superior (faster, and 6-4 is probably a bit better than 4-5).

Hi Pocus ,

Because it's historical I think, PD were worse than modern ships but still had significant combat value plus you can't just remove all of them at once from the seas or you'll lose control of your sea lanes (dreadnought appeared only from 1906 so only 8 years before the game).

About the cost, PD needed more men for lower combat prowess and had overall higher maintenance costs because of size/speed/autonomy and some technical issues including various designs in a same navy.
You can also add to that some were maintained purely for prestige reasons.

Honestly Pocus is correct and the battlecruisers were modern and generally heavier than even some real dreadnoughts (compare Derfflinger class to HMS Dreadnought 26000 tons vs 18000 tons and a crew of 1000 vs 800). Nevermind the puny pre-dreadnoughts.

If I am buying capital ships I generally buy up all my BC first because they are the best deal for the MPP. So I think BC could use a MPP cost increase and the BB could use a decrease. Not essential but I'm saying it would make sense both historically and gamebalance-wise. (Also probably decrease the limit of BB because no one is building those anymore by 1914)

Putting my naval history hat on for a moment:

Basically the cost of a warship in a particular era is proportional to the tonnage of the ship.

Taking the example of 3 almost-simultaneous ships from the Royal Navy, you can see that the pre-Dreadnought was a worse buy, on those terms - a bit more £/ton. But still slightly cheaper than the battlecruiser of the same vintage. Coal-fired battlecruisers also suffered extra costs because they were designed to be fast, meaning they had to have a larger crew of stokers - endurance at high speed was determined by how long stokers could shovel fuel in.

HMS Agamemnon (pre-Dreadnought) tonnage 16,500 complement 800 cost £1.65M
HMS Invincible (battlecruiser) tonnage 17,250 complement ?1,000 cost £1.7M
HMS Dreadnought (Dreadnought) tonnage 18,120 complement 810 cost £1.79M

These are all 1906-8 prices, later dreadnoughts and battlecruisers were heavier and more expensive.

In short - costs should be rebalanced so pre-Dreadnoughts are marginally cheaper, and battlecruisers are in line with battleships.

Though also, arguably the build limit for pre-Dreadnoughts should be set to 0 as no-one would ever have built one post-1914!

Yes, this was my train of thoughts. It seems more and more probable that they have been set more costly than dreadnoughts to represent the fact they are a deprecated, non-viable design, compared to modern ships. As such, they should not be buildable, only repairable. Practically it changes nothing, I don't believe players buy pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers anyway.

About viable ships, the light cruiser can use some love. In my own tiny mod, I set them to naval recon 2 and 20 speed, so they have a use as picket and recon (or transport escort).