Nuclear Cruiser

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    • Nuclear Cruiser

      Should this be added? 9
      1.  
        No (7) 78%
      2.  
        Nova, your bad at making polls & suggestions (3) 33%
      3.  
        Yes (2) 22%
      4.  
        Undecided (0) 0%
      I said something about this on someone else's post on naval mines, and thought that it could use it's own post. I think it's a good idea, at any rate.

      There is already several nuclear warships, as everyone who has played the game for any amount of time should know. There is the nuclear carrier, battleship, and submarine, all of them good in their own right. But there is one absently missing that would be a good addition, in one form or another: The cruiser.

      Now, nuclear cruisers are an oddity when it comes to service lifespan, as most of the ones ever built were for the US navy, and a few of them were originally designation nuclear destroyer leaders, later changing designation to cruiser. But that's not the point of this. Nuclear cruisers would be a cool addition to the game(and also round out the current collection of nuclear warships IG), and could be useful in a lot of situations.

      Now, for my idea of how they could be used... Honestly, having something similar to the frigate's AA screening role in CoN is the closest analogy for what I'd personally want to see from them, except expanding upon it slightly, to include submarines. Saying that, though, I've never offensively engaged a submarine with destroyers, so that role may already be filled by them, and then, in which case, it'd have weaker attack against subs than the destroyers(makes up for it with the range). I'm not that well versed with the game's mechanics...

      (the next paragraph is mostly copy-pasted from the naval mines thread, on a whim, so expect some discrepancies I may have missed)

      It would have anti-sub, anti-air, and anti-surface standoff capabilities(not much more than a cruiser would), but it is very slow compared to the other nuclear vessels(only slightly faster than a normal cruiser, and therefore more suited to escouting normal fleets), doesn't have much more health than other cruisers, and is vulnerable to close up surface action, rockets, and massed air attack, if it has no support with it. To make up for it's rather overpowered standoff attack range(and by overpowered, I mean it can attack subs and aircraft out of the range of suicide, IE right on top of the target, and could attack from 70, maybe somewhere up to 80 km away.) against aircraft and submarine targets, the defensive stats would be complete garbage except for anti-air, which is still pretty bad when compared with the normal cruisers. It is also incapable of dealing damage to ground units, and minimal damage(i.e. 0.1) to buildings. I'd think that is reasonably balanced. It's not very fast or healthy, not all too powerful, but it has excellent ranged capability over all the other warships, and more importantly, it can shoot down aircraft and submarines(though for this, it can only do so if the submarine is being detected by a naval bomber. No metaphysical sight seeing thing for them) from a great standoff range, whereas all other AA units(and surface units in the case of ships against subs) must be in direct contact with the enemy to shoot at them. Would add a unique flavor to the nuclear cruiser, a defacto reason to exist besides the fact they were made IRL. Also, possibly allow the nuclear cruiser to carry one or 2 rockets(level 3 or 4, obviously, because otherwise they are useless against other ships. Also, as a pre-requisite, the cruiser has to be touching the land for the rockets to get loaded on the ship. IDK, it sounded good.). Just one or two. No need for a rocket bed, but having a few rockets would be cool for naval warfare, and supporting naval landings. And no nuclear rockets, because that'd just ruin the fun. Obviously, it would be recommended to have the nuclear cruiser in a fleet of other ships, such as carriers, which can spot submarines for it to shoot at, and locate aircraft coming in, and can also operate with the other nuclear surface ships, though it will severely cripple their speed for the defensive aircraft screen.

      The USS Long Beach is a pretty good example of nuclear cruiser I'm talking about: This thing here . Has anti-air, anti-sub, and also some anti-ship missiles at it's disposal. Obviously the missiles would just be cosmetic in terms of stuff being launched at the target, IG... Like artillery shells from other ships and artillery pieces.

      No clue what the other 3 nationalities would use, but it's a start.
    • MontanaBB wrote:

      NovaTopaz wrote:

      I've never offensively engaged a submarine with destroyers . . . .
      NT, the best way to kill in-game submarine units is with ranged naval gunfire from a big stack of your own high-level destroyer squadrons. You're inflicting damage on the subs from a distance and they cannot respond, so it's cost-free.
      Well, I get that. I've just never really done it, due to massive limitation of not being able to see the sub unless you have a nav bomber about(... Or a sub is attacking some of your BB's, but then you want your destroyer in WITH the stack, not on the outskirts to pick them off...)... If they are with carriers, yeah, but if not, they are blind against sub threats, which, before the carrier, made destroyers nigh useless at their job... Which has been most of my experience using destroyers, sadly.
    • MontanaBB wrote:

      NT, the best way to kill in-game submarine units is with ranged naval gunfire from a big stack of your own high-level destroyer squadrons. You're inflicting damage on the subs from a distance and they cannot respond, so it's cost-free.
      you have forgotten what naval bombers are built for. they are the only unit that can find subs without the subs attacking first.
      "White Fang knew the law well: To oppress the weak and obey the strong"
      Jack London, White Fang

      My parents once told me not to play with matches, so I built a flamethrower
    • NukeRaider33 wrote:

      you have forgotten what naval bombers are built for.
      No, sir. I was quite specific: I said destroyers are the best unit to kill submarines, not the best unit to find them. Killing subs with ranged naval gunfire from DDs is cost-free; killing subs with NPBs incurs casualties.

      Obviously, the easiest way to find subs is using naval patrol bombers, but NPBs are not always available or even within flight range in mid-ocean. There are a variety of other techniques for flushing out enemy subs, including using vanguard formations of subs and/or destroyers moving ahead of your main body in open. Subs make ideal units for this purpose, because sub-on-sub combat is so ineffective and slow, it give you time to bring up a hunter-killer pack of your destroyers to kill the enemy subs with ranged gunfire while the subs are locked in melee combat.

      Remember: when you're trying to avoid casualties, ranged combat, when the enemy cannot return ranged fire, is always preferable to melee combat, and maintains the flexibility to withdraw should your opponent bring up superior reinforcements.