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Author Topic: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post  (Read 2101 times)

Deshara

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ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« on: September 22, 2021, 05:59:13 AM »

I've always found it interesting in games to pay attention to what IRL ratings games go with when classifying ships and while I've been able to pick up some sense of the meanings over time from gaming & cultural osmosis and the occasional lazy google, but I always got the sense (& google solidified this sense) that these terms were largely arbitrary & overlapping, or just described a general continuity of scale. But I decided tonight to really sit down & figure out what all is going on, and it turns out that sense was wrong! All of these terms have concrete & distinct meanings, and I find it fascinating and want to share.

So! Origin, usage or how they relate to eachother. In no particular size order;

A) Battleships! Gotta start here, this one's important so bear with me all of this winds up being relevant to other stuff.
The name for the modern "Battleship" comes from "Ship of the Line (Of Battle)". The end of wind sails & ships gaining the ability to sail regardless of the wind heralded the end of broadsiding & line battles, and with them they dropped all but the "battle" part of the name, hence "Battleships". It's actually a little funny, it went from "Ship of the Line (Of Battle)" to "(Ship of the Line of) Battleship." It flipped lol. It's important to note that in the pre-modern era nearly every ship built for the express purpose of leaving the coast to make war was a battleship, even if they were small. The only classification below Battleship was Sloop Of War (more on that later). So, for the rest of section A when I say "battleship" I mean "any warship larger than a sloop / with a gundeck", the modern usage of the word "battleship" when applied to pre-modern ships refers specifically to Ships of the Line of the 1st, 2nd & 3rd rating.

1st rate ships were national flagships, 3 full decks of guns (some had 4 but the 4th deck was basically fake, essentially a PR trick for propaganda. The largest sotl with the most guns ever was a 3-decker). These were so powerful that they always had to be the flagships of their country's defense fleet & couldn't operate with the country's "blue sea navy" -- IE the portion of a country's navy that can sail around the world to wage distant wars. Of note; bc a non-blue sea navy could use coastal craft, and bc a blue sea navy couldn't take the 1st rate battleships with it, that meant that 1st rate battleships were effectively coastal ships. Combine the fact that they were extremely expensive with the fact that they were barely usable for anything, they didn't make many of these.
2nd rate battleships had 2 1/2 gun or 3 decks but couldn't stand up to a 1st rated ship in 1v1. Because these were less important in battles critical to a government's continued existence, these tended to be the flagships of blue sea navies, sailing with invasion or colonial fleets to function as their anchor in large battles.
3rd rate battleships had 2 decks & it was found that as long as the ship doesn't need to be relegated to permanent capital defense (1st) or operate as a flagship for a blue sea navy (2nd), it was always better to run a 3rd rate ship bc they were A) able to go toe-to-toe with any ship that wasn't permanently relegated to capital defense (1st) or blue sea navy flagship (2nd) duty both of which were rarely surprise circumstances, 2) were much, much cheaper to build, C) were much, much faster & less prone to being pinned, outmaneuvered or just abandoned by their own fleet, and 3) bc they didn't have a 3rd deck to make the ship sit lower in the water they were much less likely for a wave to hit the bottom gundeck's open gunports & sink it out of nowhere, which was a thing that kept happening to 1st & 2nd rate ships which keep in mind were the most expensive ships in a navy.
Battleships of the 4th, 5th & 6th rating (fewer than 2 full gundecks) weren't (or weren't for very long) considered to be Ships Of The Line, & in the advent of a large battle with Ships Of The Line (1 2 & 3rd rated ships) in play would be kept out of the centre of the battle bc they'd get split in half before they could do much, and thus aren't important to the discussion of the (Ship of the Line of) Battleship class. And with this the very lengthy but annoyingly important first segment comes to a close and I get to stop talking about ship ratings.

B) Frigates. HAHA JUST KIDDING ABOUT NO MORE RATINGS. Remember how one of the benefits of a 3rd rate ship of the line is that the lack of a third deck meant the ship was far less likely to drop dead instantly for no reason? They figured out that if they built a battleship but instead of giving it 3 or 2 full or even 2 partial gundecks, if they flat out ditch all but the top gundeck they can have a battleship that is almost completely immune to the "our battleship was instakilled by a random wave hitting a gunport" thing bc of how high off the water the guns sit, and thus unlike all other rated battleships were actually capable of operating with all its guns out safely in harsh weather. Importantly, because ships had to have their heaviest guns on the bottom & lightest guns on top, that meant that even if in a storm a frigate went up against a ship with more guns on its top deck than the frigate has, all of the frigate's guns can be heavy cannons while none of the bigger ship's can be, allowing a frigate to situationally punch above its own weight, and bc of how much lighter it is it can usually run away in unfavorable situations.
Because of all these factors, frigates were the ideal setup for battleships operating either in a fleet without ships of the line that needed to avoid combat in unfavourable weather, or operating on their own in roles such as commerce raiding, scouting for a battle fleet, & long ranged cruising. The ship classification is 6th (the lowest) rate battleship, the ship's design is frigate, the ship's operational role is to cruise the open ocean independently.
... wait, cruisi--

C) CRUISERS. A cruiser is a frigate, or what a frigate was. The names split during the interim between the age of sail & the modern naval era, when ironclads were too heavy/slow to perform cruising operations so scouting battleships had to still be wooden frigates, which they slowly started trying to semi-armor with iron internal bulkheads which were called armored cruisers to differentiate them from full wooden frigates that were still able to scout but no longer able to battle and fully armored ironclads that could battle but not scout. Once a wooden hull was no longer needed for a battleship to be able to scout, they dropped the "armored" from "armored cruisers" & just called them "cruisers". So a Cruiser is just a large-ish battleship that instead of being specialized into heavy armament & armor for trading blows to the detriment of its speed & general operating capability, sacrifices heavy armament & armor for increased speed & operating capability.
As a result of this split, with the name frigate being stuck on ships essentially rendered useless in open combat, ships designed to be capable of independant cruising operations but so small that they have to specialize into their role tend to be called frigates (such as missile frigates) whereas ships large enough to be capable of independant cruising operations that are large enough to either be capable of open guns combat and/or are capable of generalized/non-specialized operations as cruisers.
(Interestingly, frigates ceased to be a thing by the time of WW1 bc of being pigeonholed out of being capable of combat, but now there are no more battleships or cruisers (only 2 countries have them, the US & Russia) but frigates have made a comeback because they were pigeonholed out of being capable of combat since open guns-based naval battles aren't a thing anymore)

4) Last one, which is the only one of SS's 4 classifications that doesn't directly stem from Royal British Naval battleship rating doctrine; Destroyers.
In the late era of the age of sail Ships of the Line were becoming so big as to be invincible to gunfire from anything but Ships of the Line of equal or greater size, which were ruinously expensive to operate (& remember, prone to capsizing for no reason). Since the biggest Ships of the Line were generally relegated to coastal capital defense or (again coastal) invasion fleets, it turned out that you could defeat a fleet of Ships of the Line by letting them get to coastal waters and then instead of deploying massive ships to gunfight them, deploy a fleet of tiny ships with bombs to suicide charge them -- a thousand of these boats cost less than 1 Ship of the Line, and it only took a single one of them finding their mark to scuttle a battleship on the spot -- a bomb the size of a boat's entire load capacity set off right against a heavy sea-capable ship's prow will capsize it no matter what (this is still true), more or less regardless of how tiny the boat is. if it holds water out well enough to make it to an enemy battleship then it can hold enough explosives to blow its keel off which instakills any ship capable of open ocean travel.
At first they were fireships, then they became bomb ships, then they started sticking the bomb on the end of a piece of wood so they could pretend it wasn't a suicide mission. Those bombs-on-a-stick were called Torpedoes, and then they attached propellers & engines to them and became what we think of as torpedoes nowadays.
The point was, as battleships became bigger & slower & more invincible to gunfire, there was an increasing prevalence of Torpedo Boats to instakill them, and with them came the need to fight them -- which you couldn't do with the fixed heavy cannons, or even with the light swivel guns way up on the deck of a battleship. So they started deploying fleets of Torpedo Gunboats; tiny boats the size of a Torpedo Boat that could match it in maneuverability & operating conditions, but with a freely maneuverable deck gun instead of a suicide bomb, small enough to mount on what was essentially a raft but still big enough to blow a hole in someone else's raft with a single shot. As the Torpedo Boats got bigger, more expensive, more sophisticated, got sails to go along with their oars, got a closed deck, got an engine, got the ability to launch their charge, got radar, so too did the Torpedo Gunboats along with them. Two "kinds" of ships, of the same size & basically the same equipment, the only difference being which of the two roles they fulfill. And eventually people started to realize -- hey, I'm bringing a fleet of torpedo ships, and also a fleet of torpedo gunships to hunt their torpedo ships. Why are they two different kinds of ship, why not just combine them.
And thus the Destroyer was born. It is a torpedo ship meant to sunder battleships. It is a torpedo gunship meant to screen battleships. Also of note, if you squint really hard, blur ur vision & look past what you see, submarines are also destroyers -- and this tracks when you consider that, the job of a submarine is to hunt enemy keel-bottomed ships and kill enemy vessels trying to do the same thing. And thus, the destroyer gets equipped to destroy submarines too. But mostly, their name refers to their role of fighting other destroyers, oddly enough. And because of how non-specific that role is (basically fight anything ur size), that means that functionally any ship smaller than a cruiser can be a destroyer. The only really concrete discerning factor in what distinguishes a heavy destroyer from a light cruiser is that destroyers arent built to cruise -- in a fleet setting destroyers need destroyer tenders, ships with a high operational capacity to lend some of that capacity to it.

So! That's the origin of all 4 of SS's classes. Frigates and cruisers are the same thing, destroyers should be the smallest class of vessel except that they can't hunt phase ships so really they're more of sloops of war, and everything else is a battleship, unless they have a good logistical profile in which case they're a cruiser (and also a battleship), regardless of size. Wasn't this a productive use of time?

Also, unrelated strictly to SS's 4 classes but relevant to the topic since we're here; what's the difference between a corvette and a sloop and a sloop of war and a brig and a cutter and a schooner and a ketch and a blah blah blah. Turns out the answers are very simple; a sloop of war is any warship smaller than a battleship, all of the rest are different styles of mast setups that, aside from determining how the ship sails in different wind conditions does little to actually distinguish them from eachother (sloops upwind better than a brig, but either could be bigger than the other), except for a corvette which is just the french name for a small boat. So, if a game uses these names and it doesn't have any wind mechanic then those names are basically meaningless, and if a game implies that a corvette is a different kind of boat than any random name for a small boat in english then it's just talking nonsense.

PS, I used the British Royal Navy classification bc -- well, we're speaking english. Find me another global naval power with a thousand+ years of naval tradition that speaks english & I'll use their system instead
« Last Edit: September 22, 2021, 06:01:13 AM by Deshara »
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Nafensoriel

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2021, 09:45:29 PM »

In practical application from history, there is some dogma in your post.
Most practical applications for "battleship" are ships that battle and cannot flee. There are no historical size limitations to the class. The term came into practical usage sometime in the late 1800s and had nothing really to do with ships of the line.

Almost every single ship in existence on earth could be classified as a cruiser. Cruiser is such a ridiculously broad term. Even destroyers are interchangeable with any other ship type. A submarine could be classified as a destroyer.

The British navy is also a bad place to really start with navies. China, Japan, Rome, etc... all had navies that existed for over a thousand years. Most of the naval terms are actually easily translatable as well since navy=trade and trade=language transfer.
All in all the class names for ships mean basically nothing beyond bureaucratic nonsense and public propaganda. Always has always will.

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Deshara

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2021, 03:43:22 AM »

almost every single ship in existence on earth could be classified as a cruiser.

the exact opposite of this is true. most ships can't operate in the open ocean independently
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David

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2021, 05:22:49 AM »

FWIW I had just come off playing a ton of Hearts of Iron 3 when we were first setting up the ship classes, so for my part it's all very much based on WW2 categories.
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Nafensoriel

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2021, 10:55:59 AM »

almost every single ship in existence on earth could be classified as a cruiser.

the exact opposite of this is true. most ships can't operate in the open ocean independently
As with all things it depends on your definition of distance.
To most navies, the water they need to protect isn't really all that far from shore.

Considering modern engine efficiencies the only limiting factor to cruise range is fuel. It is absolutely not uncommon for modern military ships to have cruising ranges in excess of 3000nmi. This is part of the doctrine shift to move or die.

If you want to ignore range and assume role limitations a RHIB with a 50 cal can sink most ships out to a mile and as such can easily be considered local water piracy suppression.

Modern engines and weapons rendered almost every naming convention rather pointless beyond the internal organization and structuring. Hell, most people don't even know the USN Ticonderoga and Spruance class were the same exact hull despite one of them being a cruiser and one of them being a destroyer. The burke replaced both because it can fill either role and yet we still consider it a destroyer instead of a cruiser(it's totally a bloody cruiser)

The first and last thing to remember about ANYTHING navy is TRADITION trumps logic. :D
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geminitiger

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2021, 01:18:42 AM »

carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, missile boats, corvettes and phase subs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=303_Xj8FKJU
« Last Edit: September 29, 2021, 01:22:09 AM by geminitiger »
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IonDragonX

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2021, 07:36:55 AM »

TIL : Littoral is a real word... nice. It doesn't mean anything in deep space, though.
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Nafensoriel

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #7 on: September 29, 2021, 10:44:19 AM »

carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, missile boats, corvettes and phase subs

//////editedlinkout
That's again kinda wrong. It will make sense on the surface but I will stress again that class nomenclature is an internal navy identification system and has nearly nothing to do with a homogenized system of "typical usage" for the hull.

Go and google "ww2 ship identification cards". Take a look at what was actually used to identify actual ships. You will notice that things such as gunboats, destroyers, and even cruisers are visually extremely similar.

Why then did we have different classes of what was effectively the identical platform?
Mission roles. In WW2 we did not have the robust missiles systems of today. As such the type of gun and weapon emplacements was very important.
During this time period, we needed things like scouts, skirmishers, etc. Today we have missiles, drones, and significantly longer ranged aircraft paired with VTOL technology. Where once we had five loadouts to handle different missions now we have one ship with the "multimission" tag to handle everything.

If you look at something like an Arleigh burke destroyer it can:
1] Fire guns effectively at ship targets
2] Fire guns effectively at land targets
3] Fire guns effectively at airborne targets.

4] Fire torpedos
5] Fire missiles
6] Fire Cruise missiles
7] Deploy depth charges

8] Perform EWAR duties
9] Deploy drones
10] Launch a helicopter
What role does this ship fill in a fleet? Whatever role the fleet needs at the time. It can be a missile cruiser or a gunboat equally. It also does not need a fleet to operate. Do you know what its listed roll is in actuality? Guided-missile destroyer. Do you know what it replaced? A cruiser and a destroyer.

Hell even modern LCS(which btw are being transitioned to multimission profiles as well) are mostly blue water and IIRC the Constellation class is capable of over 6000nmi range and is fully blue water compatible.

All the names used in the USN or other navies are just fancy feel good distinguishers. There is no such thing as a supercarrier or heavy cruiser. These names just define the roles those ships currently perform and have absolutely no bearing as to their size or shape(except subs but sardines can suck it  ;D).
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Yunru

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #8 on: September 29, 2021, 12:58:40 PM »

Well I imagine any form of "carrier" has at least some degree of bearing on their size and shape, given they need to be a viable landing spot and supply base for said thing they carry.

Nafensoriel

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #9 on: September 29, 2021, 03:07:20 PM »

Well I imagine any form of "carrier" has at least some degree of bearing on their size and shape, given they need to be a viable landing spot and supply base for said thing they carry.

Define carrier in a modern sense.

Flight decks are a strange beast. While yes they define a shape they by no means define a function. The Japanese Hyuga class(forgot code to do funny u) is a DESTROYER that looks and acts like a carrier for helicopters. Its primary role is antisubmarine duties. It is for all intents and purposes a destroyer that happens to function as a small carrier.

This doesn't even take into account drones.
We are rapidly approaching drones being capable of swarm attacks. You could see the battlefield shift from carriers a third of a kilometer long to ships the size of a modern "frigate" with more theoretical throw weight per dollar. Is the frigate a carrier now? Is it a missile cruiser if the drones are suicide versions? Or is it a light cruiser for its ability to quickly move around and suppress/scout a region?

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Vanshilar

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2021, 04:49:35 PM »

Define carrier in a modern sense.

Yeah, not to mention, nowadays there are political considerations to what military ships are called, regardless of function or capability. For example, Japan is not allowed to have aircraft carriers according to its Constitution post-WW2, but its "helicopter destroyers" such as the JS Izumo just happen to be able to carry and fly F-35B's, which are very much fighter aircraft. Similarly the F-35B's are used by the U.S. on Marine "amphibious assault ships", which previously carried Harriers. So the designations nowadays are pretty blurred.
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Brainwright

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2021, 06:55:49 PM »

TIL : Littoral is a real word... nice. It doesn't mean anything in deep space, though.

Nice try, but these would be the drone ships around highest-level stations.
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Deshara

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #12 on: September 30, 2021, 01:00:47 AM »

TIL : Littoral is a real word... nice. It doesn't mean anything in deep space, though.

not necessarily. this was something i liked about sword of the stars; there was a class of ship you could design that wasnt capable of interstellar flight. so they were extremely cheap system defense ships. i could see such a thiing being put into starsector (via a mod) with a hullmod that sets a ship's fuel cost to infinite, reduces its fuel capacity but also increases its CR and/or decreases its supply usage. bc it doesn't have to be maintained to a hyperspace-worthy level

Well I imagine any form of "carrier" has at least some degree of bearing on their size and shape, given they need to be a viable landing spot and supply base for said thing they carry.

IRL frigates, destroyers & cruisers often carry & launch aircraft. a lot of US naval ships carry aircraft specifically so that the US Coast Guard contingent stationed within it can commandeer the ship in order to scramble an intercept mission against passing smuggler fast-mover boats. in fact, in ww2 they made submarine aircraft carriers. thats right; IRL figured out phase carriers before SS did


If you look at something like an Arleigh burke destroyer it can:
1] Fire guns effectively at ship targets
2] Fire guns effectively at land targets
3] Fire guns effectively at airborne targets.

4] Fire torpedos
5] Fire missiles
6] Fire Cruise missiles
7] Deploy depth charges

8] Perform EWAR duties
9] Deploy drones
10] Launch a helicopter

What role does this ship fill in a fleet? Whatever role the fleet needs at the time. It can be a missile cruiser or a gunboat equally. It also does not need a fleet to operate. Do you know what its listed roll is in actuality? Guided-missile destroyer. Do you know what it replaced? A cruiser and a destroyer.

i think you're confusing "capable of" with "good at". this is the Bradley Fighting Vehicle problem, sticking a autocannon on an APC doesnt make it a light attack vehicle just bc its technically capable of knocking light vehicles out of commission bc it still also being an APC means you have nowhere to fit ammo for it to operate as a light attack vehicle for long enough before needing to be resupplied. which is largely what the distinction between cruisers & not-cruisers comes down to; a lot of ships can do all of the things cruisers can do, but they generally don't have the operational capacity to perform  back-to-back missions independently. A destroyer can fire missiles at a target, but then they need to be resupplied & in order to perform repeated fire missions in a short time they have to operate within a fleet that can resupply them. Give it enough size & logistical capacity (read as: storage space & CR for terminal nerds) to be operationally capable of repeated missions and its a cruiser.
Like, take the Irish Navy for example. They have a fleet of, like, 4 patrol boats -- you could call them corvettes, destroyers, frigates, whatever, bc they're capable of doing all of the missions those ships are capable of. and they are capable of independent cross-global trips -- they keep going to the eastern mediteranean sea for missions in a country whose name i dont remember. Bbbbut, a while ago one of them got into combat with a spanish fishing boat poaching irish fish out of their waters, had to blow the fishing boat up, and then it had to end it mission bc a fishing boat rammed it. So the irish navy is made up of boats that could do most if not all of the duties of a cruiser, BUT, it can only do them once before needing to be tended to, which means in a war setting they absolutely would not be used as a cruiser gets used bc they lack something crucial to a cruiser; operational capacity -- the capacity to perform multiple missions in a row without needing to be tended to.
& keep in mind that this distinction existed in WW2 too, so its not like this is a new paradigm -- then as now one of the defining features of a destroyer is that when operating within a fleet they had to have a destroyer tender -- a (usually) cruiser whose job was to keep the destroyers operationally capable. And when not operating within a fleet they have to operate within limping distance of a port. Which is basically what all destroyers are doing rn bc there isnt a naval war on. So this seems to me largely a matter of peace time making it easy to make claims that wouldn't hold up under stress
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Nafensoriel

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #13 on: September 30, 2021, 11:46:56 AM »

No, I am not confusing capable with good at.
The burke class is good at every single one of those things. It is massively superior to the ships it replaced.
Heck, even the Bradley was a massively successful combat vehicle. The movie is about as fake as you can get btw. Small detour here but the brad was more effective than the abrams at vehicle kills in its first war. Massively more effective at combat kills in fact. The reason Bradleys were pulled back from active engagements was due to under armor and IEDs which often resulted in mission killed vehicles though the crew typically survived. MRAPs are nowhere near the front-line effectiveness of a brad and never will be.

The magazine differences between a burke and a Ticonderoga are tiny. IIRC there is an 18 missile difference out of a hundred between the two. The burke also has superior missiles and full aegis compatibility. Oh and their radar roflstomps most of their competition right now.

The ACTUAL reason the Ticonderoga class was elevated from DDG to CG was due to its capacity to operate as a FLAG vessel. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with its size or armament. It is outclassed by the larger and nastier burke in EVERY way.

Operational capacity has absolutely nothing to do with getting RAMMED by a ship when the worst ship guns have standoff ranges of over a kilometer of effective fire range. That is just a stupid skipper. The comparison is saying an IOWA is capable of being mission killed by a cruise liner if it gets rammed by said cruise ship. In order to be rammed at all, they were in a *** position. 

Modern navies are multimission. The reason for this is to REMOVE operational limitations. I would like you to take a look at the actual Constellation class frigate compared to the burke.
Beyond their draft, the ships are very similar in size. Yet one is for littoral operations and obviously 2000 tons lighter. The ships the constellation class are replacing were HALF to ONE QUARTER the size.

Why is this? Well, most of your assumptions are that each ship is needed to supply warshots. It's the other way around now. It's about your ability to deny a shot. A carrier group is now layers of defensive fire. The carrier protects the fleet the fleet protects the carrier.
A single destroyer today is capable of sinking a battlegroup on paper. If we reintroduced a modern update of the TLAM-N then a single destroyer is capable of annihilating multiple cities and fleets. The defensive layers ships have now multiply with the number of ships. Where in WW2 antiaircraft fire was basically a saturation and pray game missile defense is precision now. The game now is DETECTION. Neutralization is easy(er). Modern weapons are very capable of mission-killing far bigger targets than what they can be launched from. Hell, the mod4 can be used as an anti-missile weapon... When your WEAPONS start being multimission the class argument gets tossed straight into the wheely bin.

Operational capacity arguments died the moment computers entered the battlefield. It is way too easy to carry death around now. Every ship now has operational ranges in the thousands. The DDG-55 exceeded 200 days at sea and remained combat-capable. Computers made this possible.

I can flat out tell you in another decade the targeting capacities on ships the size of a destroyer will enable it to engage far more than 2 surface targets effectively. It will then be entirely possible to build a ship that can fire saturation level attacks against entire task groups. This is why the current USN fleet is composed of destroyers and attack submarines for about 2/3rds its commissioned ships.





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Igncom1

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Re: ship classifications as compared to IRL ratings; an effort post
« Reply #14 on: September 30, 2021, 12:01:52 PM »

Considering destroyers and frigates, how they were, and how they are, and all they have been.

It's better just to make something up as that'll make as much sense as the terms we used in history anyway.  ;D

Anybody who gets sweaty over it is basically just wasting their own time.
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