Imperial Battleships

[Condottiere]

The concept wasn't exactly secret.

The first one to conceive of it was an Italian, the Japanese Satsuma and American South Carolina classes could be considered competitors, except that Fisher had the resources to push his vision first and fastest.

Hindsight says that if the British had developed a triple turret, they could have with a broken deck, had placed the turrets at positions A, X, Y, with nine guns, along the centre line, without really requiring superfiring.

Traveller predreadnoughts, could be armed with a mass driver or railgun spinal mount.

 

[rinku]

The same Christmas (1980) that I got Traveller, I received Avalon Hill's Jutland, so how about that? (I'd asked for either, was more enthusiastic about Jutland but got both and... the rest is history.)

Things moved so rapidly, that Dreadnaught (which was a single ship class) was only the best battleship in the world for 17 months, when its near-sister ship HMS Bellerophon was launched (followed by the other two ships in THAT class over the next few months. Though admittedly, the differences between the two classes were fairly minor). And that basically continued, with the RN adding about four ships a year for some time, each class being fairly similar but making changes.

By the battle of Jutland in 1916 which involved 28 battleships and 9 battlecruisers, HMS Dreadnaught was not exactly obsolete, but was well outclassed by more modern designs (especially the likes of the Queen Elizabeth class). As it happens, Dreadnaught was being refitted at the time of the battle and missed it.

Nine years is all there was between the launching of Dreadnaught and the battle of Jutland.

 

[Endie]

I kept my pedantic daemon under control so far, but since there seems to be a 50-50 split in what people are saying in this thread: it was HMS Dreadnought. The Dreadnaught was an American tug which totally failed to redefine the balance of naval warfare between the great powers in the first half of the 20th century.

 

[WHULorigan]

I kept my pedantic daemon under control so far, but since there seems to be a 50-50 split in what people are saying in this thread: it was HMS Dreadnought. The Dreadnaught was an American tug which totally failed to redefine the balance of naval warfare between the great powers in the first half of the 20th century.

Thanks for the correction. I had them reversed.

 

[phavoc]

You want to talk about being sold a fake bill of Dreadnought goods... I bought Massie's Dreadnought thinking it was going to be over 1,000 pages on the ship itself.

Nerp...

I got a CHAPTER on the ship itself. The rest was all about the tow-headed cousins in Europe who were playing the Game of Thrones and couldn't be bothered to be peaceniks.

It actually was a fairly good book, though it took me a while to get over my buyer's remorse. Eventually I did and bought the sequel, Castles of Steel.

 

[rinku]

Whups. My apologies. I'll leave my posts uncorrected to expose my shame regarding the spelling.

Maybe if it had been at Jutland I might get it right. But I can't reliably spell Bellerophon or Temeraire without checking either...

 

[Condottiere]

You'll note three turrets of same calibre, though one set is shortened.

 

[korpz]

So no word on the 1st class battleship class then. No Problems, I'll do my own design.

 

[Condottiere]

Historically, light battleships, as opposed to battlecruisers, are second class.

Depending which version you are familiar with, the Sylea class battleships are supposedly a hundred kilotonnes.

Classical understanding is that a frontline battleship is two hundred kilotonnes.

If convention is that first class is a previous generation of frontline battleships, than you're looking at something upto two hundred kilotonnes, manoeuvre drive factor/five, jump factor/three drive, and likely minimum factor/ten armoured hull.

 

[collins355]

So no word on the 1st class battleship class then. No Problems, I'll do my own design.

No, the only mention outside the MJD-verse I could find is of 2nd Class Cruisers. I haven't done a comprehensive search of all canon material yet.

 

[phavoc]

Historically, light battleships, as opposed to battlecruisers, are second class.

Depending which version you are familiar with, the Sylea class battleships are supposedly a hundred kilotonnes.

Classical understanding is that a frontline battleship is two hundred kilotonnes.

If convention is that first class is a previous generation of frontline battleships, than you're looking at something upto two hundred kilotonnes, manoeuvre drive factor/five, jump factor/three drive, and likely minimum factor/ten armoured hull.

Depends in the era. The US built 'light' South Dakota class battleships, and then built the follow-on Iowa class. South Dakota class was notably inferior in armor protection, but had same guns and speed as Iowa.

Historically light battleships were built for various reasons - cost and speed being the main. One could argue that the WW1 era battle cruisers were essentially light battleships, or at least some like the RN were. As they discovered, ships with battleships class main guns and enhanced cruiser level armor don't belong in the line of battle fighting battleships.

Traveller is different though since the weapons technology is so much different. Rather than having bigger guns they simply add more guns. So aside from a spinal mount your 50k dton heavy cruiser may be a dupe of a 150k dton battleship except for having few weapons.

To the ops question, there doesn't really exist a ships book for 1st class battleships. For the Imperium I'd expect 1st class ships to be TL15, but they may differ from that depending on their planned missions. A 'light' Imperial battleship might trade armor for jump factor, but anything is possible in the game.

 

[Condottiere]

It's always a rather controversial discussion, if the Iowa class are actually battlecruisers.

Having had a number of years to consider the issue, I've come to the conclusion that a battleship is a balanced equation of speed, protection, and firepower, whereas a battlecruiser emphasizes speed and firepower, and compromises protection.

As far as I can tell, most (current) light battleships have the same balance, but scaled down, in order to fit into rather niche roles or environments, whereas mainstream battlecruisers would have the same tonnage as the current battleships, but with less protection, though substantially faster.

Since this is a game, with made up technology, it's hard to be definitive as to what would constitute exactly the qualifications of starwarships categories.

However, by technological level fifteen, speed can be equivalent for battleships, without requiring the compromises that would have split capital ship classes up, since it tends to hinge on percentages being more efficient.

The thirty five kilotonne Scharnhorst class of the Great Patriotic War era, built in the mid Thirties, despite being at the upper end of existing Treaty tonnage limits, would be considered as light battleships.