Aircraft carriers vs battleships

[hewhoknowsall]

In real life, aircraft carriers eventually made battleships obsolete. However, Civilization 4 and many other games make the battleship the main modern navy vessel.

How about in Civilization 5? Do aircraft carriers and aircraft succeed over battleships?

Also, what about naval warfare in general?

 

[Lancor]

In real life, aircraft carriers eventually made battleships obsolete.

Afaik no modern day aircraft carrier leaves harbor without an escort of half a dozen combat vessels ;o

 

[migkillertwo]

In real life, aircraft carriers eventually made battleships obsolete. However, Civilization 4 and many other games make the battleship the main modern navy vessel.

How about in Civilization 5? Do aircraft carriers and aircraft succeed over battleships?

Also, what about naval warfare in general?

Aircraft carriers will far and away succeed against comparably numbered battleships for 4 big reasons

1: The ranged combat strength of fighters is stronger than the ranged combat strength of battleships

2: The manual has not confirmed that battleships have interception ability. However, it has confirmed that destroyers and missile cruisers do have this ability. This means that battleships, if not escorted by destroyers, are defenseless against carrier-borne fighters

3: A carrier with 3 fighters can attack a battleship 3 times, whereas a battleship, if it is in range of the carrier, can only attack once

4: The range of fighters is far and away longer than the ranged bombardment range of battleships.

In terms of naval warfare, carriers will be at a ridiculous, and yet entirely realistic, advantage against battleships.

That said, battleships will quickly become obsolete as civilizations focus more on air power as the main tool in establishing dominance over the sea, and as the main system for delivering fire support to land units

The only way that battleships will be useful is in the times before civilizations build aircraft carriers, or as fire support assets for when there is too much anti aircraft near the beach.

 

[Liquidated]

There's simply no way Civ5 can hope to accurately portray modern Naval combat as the distances involved are shrunk into a few hexes. This isn't the game to even start to try and make naval combat realistic.

Btw, revel in those Giant death robots!

I would suggest a game like IL-2 Sturmovik Pacific Fighter if you really want to experience what it's like trying to find a needle in the haystack.

Edit: a very nice production about the tragic death of the Battle Ship Yamato (and anything trying to escort it).

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Spark026]

Its not drastically onesided, but the odds favor the carrier. Who ever finds the other first will win.

In the video at gamespot, the battleship destroys the carrier in ONE shot.

But the carrier will have a recon advantage under even circumstances, allowing it to get in the first blow more often than not.

 

[IdleEnergy]

IIRC, air units get a penalty when attacking navel units as part of the game balance, although that may have applied to bombers only. Maybe somebody can correct me if I'm mistaken.

 

[Sarda]

In a realistic situation of a single carrier vs a single battleship, without a doubt the battleship would win for one easy reason that civilization doesn't feature. Battleships (when last used) were refitted to carry cruise missles and anti-ship missiles, While a carrier does have some anti-missile defense, its escorts provide the majority of it. The carrier would be sunk from missle fire overrunning its anti-missile batteries before it scrambled a single fighter given reaction time to missiles even being detected by radar.

Civ isn't realistic, so the Battleships only have their ww2 weapons, their big guns wouldn't make it into range before fighters torpedo'd and missiled them to the bottom of the ocean.

 

[TaylorFlame]

I'd imagine that the main purpose of the Battleships in Civ V would be to provide coastal fire support, and to protect carriers and transports from attack. A carrier, properly supported and with a full compliment of fighters continually doing recon on the surroundings, would be able to find and effectively sink and carrier-less foe using its fire greater operational range and visibility.

 

[Carver]

In a realistic situation of a single carrier vs a single battleship, without a doubt the battleship would win for one easy reason that civilization doesn't feature. Battleships (when last used) were refitted to carry cruise missles and anti-ship missiles, While a carrier does have some anti-missile defense, its escorts provide the majority of it. The carrier would be sunk from missle fire overrunning its anti-missile batteries before it scrambled a single fighter given reaction time to missiles even being detected by radar.

Civ isn't realistic, so the Battleships only have their ww2 weapons, their big guns wouldn't make it into range before fighters torpedo'd and missiled them to the bottom of the ocean.

Assuming that the carrier has a full complement of aircraft (fighters, recon aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft, small AWACS aircraft) and that those aircraft are on constant patrol (as they would be during wartime) the carrier will easily win against a lone battleship. The BB would be detected first; subsequently, the carrier would launch the appropriate aircraft with the appropriate weapons to sink the BB. In other words, the BB would be detected long before the BB could acquire the carrier as a target and launch those missiles. A true surprise attack is the BB's only hope, but that's very unlikely.

 

[Sarda]

You are right, the radar range is 200km with the anti-ship missile range at 125km, The carrier still has a advantage.

 

[CustodianV131]

I'm not sure the battleship becomes obsolete when the aircraft-carrier becomes available. Is it all about who can beat who?

There are roles that a battleship can fulfill where no aircraft carrier is needed.

Sure an aircraft carrier can do those as well and more, but sometimes its just not needed.

 

[Sarda]

Battleship upgrades into a Missile Cruiser around the time of the Carrier

 

[PawelS]

I'm not sure what are the stats of a Missile Cruiser. On page 140 in the manual it's 75/60, which is much better than a Battleship (60/32), while on page 212 it's only 60/25.

 

[Sarda]

Likely its just Battleship Stats with the ability to hold missiles.

 

[adam_grif]

In real life, aircraft carriers eventually made battleships obsolete. However, Civilization 4 and many other games make the battleship the main modern navy vessel.

How about in Civilization 5? Do aircraft carriers and aircraft succeed over battleships?

Also, what about naval warfare in general?

In Civ IV the Battleship upgraded into the Missile Cruiser with Robotics. Something similar will likely happen in V. The aircraft carrier is the once and future king of naval warfare.

 

[Sarda]

Eh.. I don't think its king, the nuclear submarine is far superior for the fact it carries armaggeddon in a launcher tube, not to mention without destroyers it can't even be seen to be attacked.

 

[Olleus]

You shouldn't compare a single battleship to a carrier fully loaded with fighters. The latter requires 4 oils rather than just 1 and costs over 3 times more.

In a real game of civ, you'd chose between a fully loaded acrrier or 3 battleships. I'd take the latter any day. Attack power between the two opponents might be similar, but battleships have more defence and, more importantly, to kill the BB group, you'd have to do 30HP worth of damage. To kill the carrier and all the fighters its carrying, you only have to do 10HP of damage. Unless you can show me that each fighter can do 3 times more damage across the encounter than each battleships, I'll go with the big guns.

 

[Sarda]

Carrier would be 1 Oil + 3 Aluminum for jets fighters or +3 Oil for fighters. Almost 2000-3000 Hammers total dependant on the fighter type.

Battleships are 1 Oil Each and only 500 hammers, for 1 loaded carrier you could have FOUR battleships, wow.

Battleships clearly look the better choice, especially with how many things require alluminum in the modern era, you wouldn't want that many jet fighters in the middle of nowere.

 

[Sphinx]

If you compare a aircraft carrier with a battleship, you need to factor in the planes. You need 3 planes.

Lets say jet 3 figters, each costs 600, carrier costs 520.
For the same cost (2320) you can have 4 battleships (500 cost each), almost 5.
4 battleships can do a lot more than a filled aircraft carrier in a fight between eachother.
(Destroyers cost 380, you can have 6 destroyers for the filled carrier, if you have the resources)

 

[berni19]

i think in the scenario we saw in preview..all was ok as the peace was broken when egipt was declared in the same turn...carrier couldnt move as the move was on the attacker and carrier was unable to alert the planes so quickly...very realistic scenario in did..