Cruise Missile

[rhialto]

Yes, battleships are useless compared to aegis cruisers. That is quite realistic. I believe musketteers are also useless compared to modern infantry. They (battleships) are different generation of technology, so of course they are outclassed.

Having battleships being the ONLY unit able to fire cruise missiles is ridiculously non-historical. The smaller classes of warship are much better known for firing missiles than the battleships are.

 

[dexters]

Yes, battleships are useless compared to aegis cruisers. That is quite realistic.

Have you heard of this ship?

Cruiser - 15/10/6/1 (7/1/2), Radar vs. Battleship 18/12/5/2 (8/2/2)


BB's are no longer very useful the minute they become available because Cruisers can be built before them when Combustion is discovered. For the shields they cost and their general sluggishness (stacking them with other ships, slows the entire task force down to 5 tiles movement), I'd much rather have the faster Cruisers as my taskforce leadships with a destroyer screen in front of the cruisers escorting the transports, which coincidentally also have a movement of 6.

In Civ3, speed is better than defense, since higher defense only means less of a probability that a ship or unit will be destroyed. Projecting naval power is much more effective as in terms of swarming, where you build more of the smaller, cheaper, faster ships.

If BB's are given cruise missile capability, they can rain terror with impunity from a distance. Firaxis had the right idea by giving these missles the most bombard rate of fire of 3. They are quite lethal, only, we don't have a lot of reasons to use them.

Having battleships being the ONLY unit able to fire cruise missiles is ridiculously non-historical.

If you give them to more ships, you end up in the same situation in which we started. BB will still be useless.

As for historical accuracy, Civ is riddled with inaccuracies and abstractions. The idea here isn't to create Jane's Warship simulator but to give each ship some purpose. It's not like i'm proposing we launch stealth bombers from Battleships, which be totally wrong. BB's have been the heavy bombard ships of history. And since ship to land bombard is gimped nin Civ3, BB's have never really found their role, a cruise missle capability, especially multiple missle capability would put their role of a bombard ship back in the fore. By enhancing the BB's ability to bombard, you actually make their role more historically accurate, ironically.

The alternative 'best use' for these ships by most people is as shock absorbers to absorb the damage of an enemy destroyer or submarine attack, and that's not really how they were employed in history given their status as capital ships. Battleships were usually the last ships to see action and engaged only other capital ships. Outside of big fleet battles, the BB's escorts would be the ones incharge of fending off attacks from smaller ships and submarines.

 

[sir_schwick]

Make battleships tougher and have a 3 tiles up-powered bombardment, possibly multiple bombards a turn. This means they are useful in the pre-carrier era as the heavy sluggers.

However you should be able to upgrade to a cruise missle version, most naval vessels should get the same. At this point the BB will be antiquated because cheaper ships can use the same missles as the BB, and those missles have farther reach.

 

[rhialto]

Dexters,

You're now starting to see flaws in the entire civ naval combat model. Somewhere on my wiki is a maritime manifesto detailing a set of rules on how naval combat can be fixed. If those rules are adopted, the BB would return to its rightful place.

 

[dexters]

You're now starting to see flaws in the entire civ naval combat model

The combat model is fine, and pre C3C, enemy warships could clean out your coastal tile imrpovements in short order.

The problem isn't so much the bombard strength of the BB but the fact that it's not very useful because of its range. My initial suggestion was to see a synergy existing between what cruise missles had to offer and what BB was lacking

. SirSchwick's idea of increasing its bombard range is interesting but I don't really see a problem with giving Battleships the exclusive ability to carry these missles, which as someone has already noted can be modded in Civ3, but we're talking about Civ4. This would give each ship in the game a niche role. You keep confusing game balance with what you like to see and history and you're not the first either. I'm looking at this more on a game balance perspective.


As for your Wiki ideas, Its interesting, but there's a big problem. Your unit suggestions generally get much too detailed for something like Civ. Civ isn't a combat simulator and it abstracts a lot of things. I don't expect there to be more than 1 type of BBs in the future and if there are two of the same unit, like submarine and nuclear submarine, there is a clear upgrade path with one unit being the poor man's equivalent. That's as it should be and as much as I am a proponent of improving the naval side of the game, I'm not really infavour of complicating it with more unit. The AI can never know how to use all the ships anyways and you can see in Civ3, they really love destroyers in the industrial age and build aegis cruisers exclusively in the modern era.

P.S. If you'd like to start a discussion on naval issues, i'm game. I do agree with you on one thing and that is the naval model in Civ could use more improvement, by making it more unique. It's nice how air units have their unique actions but naval units seems like glorified land units.

 

[rhialto]

The problem isn't so much the bombard strength of the BB but the fact that it's not very useful because of its range.

This is in fact the ugly little secret of BBs. They are little more than white elephants in modern warfare. I agree with you that they are underpowered compared to the cruiser unit though.

As for your Wiki ideas, Its interesting, but there's a big problem. Your unit suggestions generally get much too detailed for something like Civ. Civ isn't a combat simulator and it abstracts a lot of things.

The list of units is intended to be exhaustive without being ridiculous (no giant death robots). Did you check out this page http://lajzar.co.uk/wiki/index.php?Combat and those linked under it? Those were theones I meant when i said the naval model is broken.

 

[sir_schwick]

I think in fact civ would be more interesting if BBs became the tactical elephants they are. THe fleet which allowed you to pwn only a century earlier is now obsolete, replaced by carriers and missle warfare. Maybe land combat should have 'strategic' shifts more often too. Leads to the sense that technology actually represents something.

 

[dexters]

Depends on how the Civ4 naval element is implemented.

I do believe that if the naval system is a variation of the current model, perhaps with ships having 'special sea operations' much like current air units have their special operations, then we could argue for the Battleship's place as a heavy bombard ship.