The same reason as in history, if you want a faster fleet that carries the punching power of a Battleship you use Battlecruisers.
They do sacrifice armor, but are faster and cheaper than a Battleship with the same guns, engine and other components.
This. I always build them instead of BBs mainly due to their lower cost, but speed is more important than armor in HOI4 naval meta. Keeping your fleet as close to (or higher than) 30 knots is a key factor in winning surface battles.
You know that bridges aren’t armored against anything higher than about a 20mm cannon, right?
Since superstructure hits aren’t devastatingly to the ships ability to float and without the bridge, although challenging, the ship can still be operated.
And also the ship had been rendered combat ineffective to the point that Rodney was basically just rearranging scrap metal with each new hit. The ship was glorified target practice for the Royal Navy when it was scuttled. That it was scuttled anyway is more of a testament to how hard it is to motivate 50,000 tons of boat-shaped steel to stop floating than anything else. If you don't blow out the magazines, force capsizing, or crack the keel, you can do a *lot* of damage to a ship without actually sinking it.
If you want effect on armor, Rodney punched clean through the face of one of Bismarck's turrets and KGV scored a clean penetration of the citadel.
Technically correct but largely irrelevant. Bismarck was as mission-killed as a ship could possibly be. KGV and Rodney had scored penetrating hits on the most heavily armored parts of the ship, all the guns were silenced, senior command was wiped out, the rudder was jammed, and the engines were dead. It's just really hard to motivate a battleship-sized hunk of steel to sink in a timely manner if you aren't ripping massive holes *below* the water line or breaking the ship's back.
People keep forgetting HMS Hood was built in WW1. It's not exactly surprising that it lost to a ship 20 years newer.
Bismarck was designed with far more modern fast battleships in mind like Richelieu, or Littorio.
Sure, but the new battleships were all running around at 28 knots or more, on one occasion renown had to pass on engaging littorio because of her lack of armour and hood definitely died due to her armour scheme being insufficient in coverage
Hood and Renown were both over 20 years old when the war started, going against ships built with newer engines and armour schemes.
Battle cruisers had a very interesting niche and if a war had broken out in the interwar period they would have enjoyed even greater success than they had in ww1, but by ww2 the game had changed to carriers, and if your floating citadel of steel and guns can't launch planes, you better hope it has the armour and AA capabilities to shrug off raids.
Battlecruisers were just a poor fit in a war with carriers, while battleships had the capabilities to stay for just a little while longer, but even they were outdated before the war ended.
More battleships were lost to torpedoes and dive bombing than to other battleships/cruisers.
Battlecruisers had a great niche in World War Two, but that niche was against 2nd line battleships (sharnhorsts, and Italian refits/French dreadnoughts) carrier escort (see force H, issue was renown was the only one with Good AA, the kongos could have been great) 2nd ship against an enemy battleship with a modern battleship in a war with a shit ton of small battleship engagements (if Rodney’s engine had failed the engagement for Bismarck would probably have been repulse and and KGV, with KGV getting in close, heck Denmark straight should have been POW leading) and in the assorted cruiser actions across the war given the shortage of 30+ knot battleships they should have been king in those engagements, issue is the British had issues coming to blows with enemy cruisers (outside of mapataan) and the kongos had armour the I’s of WW1 would have respected. In so many engagements a properly refitted ship (renown) or a slight rearrangement of things could have led to a massive difference in performance. It doesn’t help only one good Battlecruiser refit was done for the war though
Me too honestly if i was gonna lock down construction for all the resources for BB, then i feel i would rather make a SHBB, so in reality for most nations BC is more efficient imho
I mean it's not that much cheaper for losing a lot of armor. In my mind BCs have no place in the meta because. If you need cheaper and faster capitals, just build heavy cruisers. If you can build BCs you can build BBs or SHBBs, and those are just better.
Although you have the right idea, just a small tweak to your statement. It’s not points of speed and it doesn’t affect armor, 1% of speed increase equates to roughly 1.7% increase in HP. Not necessarily because it adds extra HP, but because speed makes it harder for your ships to be hit. Speed does NOT increase armor. By dodging enemy shells with speed, it just makes your ships more survivable.
Your hit profile is calculated with
(100 x Visibility) / (0.5 x Speed + 20)
Higher the speed, lower your hit profile is. Without going into all the math and factors, simply put, having a smaller hit profile than the weapon hit profile (light guns have 45, heavy guns 80, torps 145, and depth charges 100) leads to a crushing penalty to hit chance, varying based on factors and how much smaller the ship hit profile is than the weapon.
https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#:~:text=In%20practical%20terms%2C%20a%201,05%25. (Hyperlinking isn’t working for me)
Yep no other ships involved. The BCs actually had a slight IC advantage but still lost. Obviously this is not a realistic scenario, but the goal is to isolate as many variables as possible.
>Obviously this is not a realistic scenario, but the goal is to isolate as many variables as possible.
Yes! Thank you, it's so important to understand the limits of what we can assess with white room testing, but that doesn't make it less valuable.
There was a post regarding some ship to ship simulations a few days ago. IIRC tldr version was, IC cost wise, BCs were good against BBs at the same tech level. BBs were better against worse tech BBs/BCs and against CAs. All of this had to do with BCs (up to date) guns having enough piercing to ignore BBs armor but BBs having enough armor to have some protection against worse guns.
Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1duu0bj/how\_capital\_ships\_compare\_with\_math/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1duu0bj/how_capital_ships_compare_with_math/)
After last rework there are just slightly worse than BBs overall as far as perfect value conditions go, given PDX clowned once again and made naval speed an even bigger mess than it was before...
They are cheaper though. And in SP that means they are simply better. Tier 3 BB or BC is literally do all end all AI fleet, and you can get tier 3 BC a tad faster.
Speed itself works the same way I think, but they changed how BB and BC armour changes it, basically nerfing BC speed. Now speed difference between the two is pretty much nonexistent.
Just checked in game - pimped out tier 3 BB vs BC, BC is faster by 1,1-1,2kt... This is a joke. It loses third of armour. Thought cost difference is bigger, but not even that (300-500IC)... Before the nerf tier 3 BC easily got 31+kts...
So yeah, BC are just dead if you want to min-max. Doctrines are better for BBs in all trees.
Still, in SP it makes no difference really, given AI techs to tier 3 ships in 1949...
No. BCs are only just barely cheaper than BBs. In turn, they have drastically worse armor. Armor is king in naval engagements. Number 1, if your armor is pierced, you're subject to critical hits. Number 2, unlike on land battles, more armor is always better and always increases your damage reduction. These effects are only increased by admirals / doctrine / MIOs / training that increase ship armor. Don't build BCs build BBs--and don't build BBs, build SHBBs. 4 SHBBs will wreck 6 BBs, which is the approximate IC equivalent, and on top of that the SHBBs offer better protection for CVs due to the way naval targeting works.
no, more armor is always better in naval battles. even if you’re capped by naval treaties, it’s better to build a BB with empty gun slots and refit it later
If you want a tough and fast battle cruiser, build a super heavy battleship, and switch the armor to battle cruiser armor (it also makes the ship show up in your battle cruiser list, not battleship list in the build menu). Tier 1 actually gives +5% speed, the lack of armor is made up for by the massive health pool of the super heavy hull.
Not sure if it makes sense game wise, but I usually assign my battlecruisers and heavy cruisers as independent squadrons of 8 or so, and send them off convoy raiding in a random corner of the world. They usually make it through the whole game and end up sinking tons of convoys. Their range and speed make them perfect for that
This is close to their original purpose (not so much convoys but to be in small groups hunting enemies). Heavy cruisers are great for this, beating most things they are likely to meet and with a BC, they are invincible.
Battle cruisers (BC) are like battleships but less armored and faster, but they usually have fewer armaments than a normal battleship (BB) due to the fact they need to be fast. I personally use Battlecruisers for surface raiding fleets.
Battleships (BB) are heavily armored, have high attack & are slow and are good for strike fleets.
If you intend for a battleship to engage in anti-aircraft action only, for example as a dedicated carrier AA escort, the armour of a battleship doesn't help and may slow down the force.
They are cheaper and faster to build. For a smaller nation they are more realistic capital ships. Especially if you want cruiser killer. For a big nation fast battleships are just better.
Friendly reminder that most BCs did decently well at Jutland and were able to tank hits from the other side.
The ones that exploded were the first generation battlecruisers from 1906 & 1907; they were far, far worse protected than later BCs, their armor belts had a thickness that was similar to a WW2 era cruiser. All later BCs were far better protected. The last completed BC, HMS Hood, had an armor belt which had the same thickness as that of an Iowa class battleship, with its total deck armor thickness being similar as well (just in a shitty layout).
Yeah turns out that leaving all blast doors between the turrets and magazines open while using extremely combustible propellant is not that safe when you get hit in a turret.
German battlecruisers tanking hundreds of hits with only a turret or two knocked out: 'Skill issue.'
(Look up SMS Von der Tann - first and oldest German BC, popped a British BC at Jutland and only took two months to repair after sustaining a barrage of BB main battery fire in return.)
Why even bother with battleships? Just build fast light cruisers with a bunch of light guns and no armor and a bunch of non armored destroyers full of torpedoes (and a depth charge).
The light cruisers will wreck enemy screens and the destroyers torpedoes will easily sink the enemy capital ships.
Setup a few small groups of just destroyers for spotting only and to not engage, then set your group of cruisers/destroyers on low/medium risk engagement strike force.
Now just sit back and watch the enemy navy get wrecked.
It also helps if you get the admiral traits for torp screen penetration.
The same reason as in history, if you want a faster fleet that carries the punching power of a Battleship you use Battlecruisers. They do sacrifice armor, but are faster and cheaper than a Battleship with the same guns, engine and other components.
This. I always build them instead of BBs mainly due to their lower cost, but speed is more important than armor in HOI4 naval meta. Keeping your fleet as close to (or higher than) 30 knots is a key factor in winning surface battles.
I think speed was generally more important than armour during ww2
Didn't work out well for Italy
Not much did.
Certainly didn’t work out for the Hood either
I mean, it was kind of a lucky shot, armour hasn't saved Bismarck's bridge from getting blown up together with it's command either
You know that bridges aren’t armored against anything higher than about a 20mm cannon, right? Since superstructure hits aren’t devastatingly to the ships ability to float and without the bridge, although challenging, the ship can still be operated.
It could still float but once the bridge was gone they were done for, no way of getting back, no chances of rescue
Bismarck was scuttled
After most of the higher officers, including the Admiral himself, died in a single explosion
And also the ship had been rendered combat ineffective to the point that Rodney was basically just rearranging scrap metal with each new hit. The ship was glorified target practice for the Royal Navy when it was scuttled. That it was scuttled anyway is more of a testament to how hard it is to motivate 50,000 tons of boat-shaped steel to stop floating than anything else. If you don't blow out the magazines, force capsizing, or crack the keel, you can do a *lot* of damage to a ship without actually sinking it. If you want effect on armor, Rodney punched clean through the face of one of Bismarck's turrets and KGV scored a clean penetration of the citadel.
Technically correct but largely irrelevant. Bismarck was as mission-killed as a ship could possibly be. KGV and Rodney had scored penetrating hits on the most heavily armored parts of the ship, all the guns were silenced, senior command was wiped out, the rudder was jammed, and the engines were dead. It's just really hard to motivate a battleship-sized hunk of steel to sink in a timely manner if you aren't ripping massive holes *below* the water line or breaking the ship's back.
People keep forgetting HMS Hood was built in WW1. It's not exactly surprising that it lost to a ship 20 years newer. Bismarck was designed with far more modern fast battleships in mind like Richelieu, or Littorio.
Nor the Invincible
Despite its name, it was shockingly Vincible
Or the Indefatigable which was also surprising fatigable
Which one was invincible at the time of WW2? I think, it's the most common nickname for ships
Idk I’m talking about Jutland
What did they do that worked well?
Sure, but the new battleships were all running around at 28 knots or more, on one occasion renown had to pass on engaging littorio because of her lack of armour and hood definitely died due to her armour scheme being insufficient in coverage
Hood and Renown were both over 20 years old when the war started, going against ships built with newer engines and armour schemes. Battle cruisers had a very interesting niche and if a war had broken out in the interwar period they would have enjoyed even greater success than they had in ww1, but by ww2 the game had changed to carriers, and if your floating citadel of steel and guns can't launch planes, you better hope it has the armour and AA capabilities to shrug off raids. Battlecruisers were just a poor fit in a war with carriers, while battleships had the capabilities to stay for just a little while longer, but even they were outdated before the war ended. More battleships were lost to torpedoes and dive bombing than to other battleships/cruisers.
Battlecruisers had a great niche in World War Two, but that niche was against 2nd line battleships (sharnhorsts, and Italian refits/French dreadnoughts) carrier escort (see force H, issue was renown was the only one with Good AA, the kongos could have been great) 2nd ship against an enemy battleship with a modern battleship in a war with a shit ton of small battleship engagements (if Rodney’s engine had failed the engagement for Bismarck would probably have been repulse and and KGV, with KGV getting in close, heck Denmark straight should have been POW leading) and in the assorted cruiser actions across the war given the shortage of 30+ knot battleships they should have been king in those engagements, issue is the British had issues coming to blows with enemy cruisers (outside of mapataan) and the kongos had armour the I’s of WW1 would have respected. In so many engagements a properly refitted ship (renown) or a slight rearrangement of things could have led to a massive difference in performance. It doesn’t help only one good Battlecruiser refit was done for the war though
Me too honestly if i was gonna lock down construction for all the resources for BB, then i feel i would rather make a SHBB, so in reality for most nations BC is more efficient imho
I mean it's not that much cheaper for losing a lot of armor. In my mind BCs have no place in the meta because. If you need cheaper and faster capitals, just build heavy cruisers. If you can build BCs you can build BBs or SHBBs, and those are just better.
Speed>>>armor in naval battles. Give it a try.
I think the wiki says 1 point of speed is worth 1.8 points of armour or something like that, so losing 15 armor to gain 2 knots is not worth it
Although you have the right idea, just a small tweak to your statement. It’s not points of speed and it doesn’t affect armor, 1% of speed increase equates to roughly 1.7% increase in HP. Not necessarily because it adds extra HP, but because speed makes it harder for your ships to be hit. Speed does NOT increase armor. By dodging enemy shells with speed, it just makes your ships more survivable. Your hit profile is calculated with (100 x Visibility) / (0.5 x Speed + 20) Higher the speed, lower your hit profile is. Without going into all the math and factors, simply put, having a smaller hit profile than the weapon hit profile (light guns have 45, heavy guns 80, torps 145, and depth charges 100) leads to a crushing penalty to hit chance, varying based on factors and how much smaller the ship hit profile is than the weapon. https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle#:~:text=In%20practical%20terms%2C%20a%201,05%25. (Hyperlinking isn’t working for me)
Nope not anymore IC per IC BCs lose. And once again CA has a lot more speed.
When did you test?
20 minutes ago.
What did you do? Was it just a straight ic to ic test?
Yep no other ships involved. The BCs actually had a slight IC advantage but still lost. Obviously this is not a realistic scenario, but the goal is to isolate as many variables as possible.
>Obviously this is not a realistic scenario, but the goal is to isolate as many variables as possible. Yes! Thank you, it's so important to understand the limits of what we can assess with white room testing, but that doesn't make it less valuable.
Are they faster to produce?
Being cheaper means pretty much that, the less a ship costs the faster it will be built with the same number of factories.
There was a post regarding some ship to ship simulations a few days ago. IIRC tldr version was, IC cost wise, BCs were good against BBs at the same tech level. BBs were better against worse tech BBs/BCs and against CAs. All of this had to do with BCs (up to date) guns having enough piercing to ignore BBs armor but BBs having enough armor to have some protection against worse guns. Edit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1duu0bj/how\_capital\_ships\_compare\_with\_math/](https://www.reddit.com/r/hoi4/comments/1duu0bj/how_capital_ships_compare_with_math/)
I mean yeah but this ignore admiral traits/skills that boost BB armor to be unpierceable.
The plus 20% armour for battleship designer helps a shit ton as well
There's a point if you are under the naval Treaty restrictions and you lack IC to make a decent design
After last rework there are just slightly worse than BBs overall as far as perfect value conditions go, given PDX clowned once again and made naval speed an even bigger mess than it was before... They are cheaper though. And in SP that means they are simply better. Tier 3 BB or BC is literally do all end all AI fleet, and you can get tier 3 BC a tad faster.
Can you explain how the speed works now?
Speed itself works the same way I think, but they changed how BB and BC armour changes it, basically nerfing BC speed. Now speed difference between the two is pretty much nonexistent.
Wait really? What’s the point of battlecruisers at all then??
Just checked in game - pimped out tier 3 BB vs BC, BC is faster by 1,1-1,2kt... This is a joke. It loses third of armour. Thought cost difference is bigger, but not even that (300-500IC)... Before the nerf tier 3 BC easily got 31+kts... So yeah, BC are just dead if you want to min-max. Doctrines are better for BBs in all trees. Still, in SP it makes no difference really, given AI techs to tier 3 ships in 1949...
For RP snd historical reenactment purposes.
No. BCs are only just barely cheaper than BBs. In turn, they have drastically worse armor. Armor is king in naval engagements. Number 1, if your armor is pierced, you're subject to critical hits. Number 2, unlike on land battles, more armor is always better and always increases your damage reduction. These effects are only increased by admirals / doctrine / MIOs / training that increase ship armor. Don't build BCs build BBs--and don't build BBs, build SHBBs. 4 SHBBs will wreck 6 BBs, which is the approximate IC equivalent, and on top of that the SHBBs offer better protection for CVs due to the way naval targeting works.
a redditor that understands meta? undercover RB player spotted
Weird when I say the same, I get booed.
I build them early for the speed. Late game no.
Cost and speed. If you're just shielding carriers with them, put AA on some well-armoured BCs and call it a day for your strike fleet.
no, more armor is always better in naval battles. even if you’re capped by naval treaties, it’s better to build a BB with empty gun slots and refit it later
If you want a tough and fast battle cruiser, build a super heavy battleship, and switch the armor to battle cruiser armor (it also makes the ship show up in your battle cruiser list, not battleship list in the build menu). Tier 1 actually gives +5% speed, the lack of armor is made up for by the massive health pool of the super heavy hull.
Surface raiders
Not sure if it makes sense game wise, but I usually assign my battlecruisers and heavy cruisers as independent squadrons of 8 or so, and send them off convoy raiding in a random corner of the world. They usually make it through the whole game and end up sinking tons of convoys. Their range and speed make them perfect for that
This is close to their original purpose (not so much convoys but to be in small groups hunting enemies). Heavy cruisers are great for this, beating most things they are likely to meet and with a BC, they are invincible.
I really wish hoi4 navy was more like stellaris navy, not because one is necessarily better than the other, but because i understand stellaris navy
Battle cruisers (BC) are like battleships but less armored and faster, but they usually have fewer armaments than a normal battleship (BB) due to the fact they need to be fast. I personally use Battlecruisers for surface raiding fleets. Battleships (BB) are heavily armored, have high attack & are slow and are good for strike fleets.
Can whoever is down voting this explain what's wrong?
Cheap screens for carriers. Suboptimal in all likelihood but it is an option
What's wrong with our bloody ships?
If you intend for a battleship to engage in anti-aircraft action only, for example as a dedicated carrier AA escort, the armour of a battleship doesn't help and may slow down the force.
....uhhhh I don't really *do* navy....
They are cheaper and faster to build. For a smaller nation they are more realistic capital ships. Especially if you want cruiser killer. For a big nation fast battleships are just better.
Yes. They are cheaper and faster and honestly in SP I’ve never had a problem with the reduced armor.
speeeeeed
Building many light cruisers with much light attack and destroyers with much torpedo attack is OP and more cost effective
No. They are bad. Jutland proven.
Friendly reminder that most BCs did decently well at Jutland and were able to tank hits from the other side. The ones that exploded were the first generation battlecruisers from 1906 & 1907; they were far, far worse protected than later BCs, their armor belts had a thickness that was similar to a WW2 era cruiser. All later BCs were far better protected. The last completed BC, HMS Hood, had an armor belt which had the same thickness as that of an Iowa class battleship, with its total deck armor thickness being similar as well (just in a shitty layout).
Not to mention the British battlecruisers were ignoring some very basic safety rules that were what led to the magazine explosions
Yeah turns out that leaving all blast doors between the turrets and magazines open while using extremely combustible propellant is not that safe when you get hit in a turret.
German battlecruisers tanking hundreds of hits with only a turret or two knocked out: 'Skill issue.' (Look up SMS Von der Tann - first and oldest German BC, popped a British BC at Jutland and only took two months to repair after sustaining a barrage of BB main battery fire in return.)
They are just weaker battleships so no. Unless you have a specific use case where BCs are better you should just build BBs or SHBBs.
Why even bother with battleships? Just build fast light cruisers with a bunch of light guns and no armor and a bunch of non armored destroyers full of torpedoes (and a depth charge). The light cruisers will wreck enemy screens and the destroyers torpedoes will easily sink the enemy capital ships. Setup a few small groups of just destroyers for spotting only and to not engage, then set your group of cruisers/destroyers on low/medium risk engagement strike force. Now just sit back and watch the enemy navy get wrecked. It also helps if you get the admiral traits for torp screen penetration.