The navy thread got me thinking and I wanted to start up a specific discussion: Would it be a good or bad idea to make navy aircraft carrier centered, as modern naval/air operations are? Battleships don't even exist anymore because of the sheer distance over which an AC can project power; 20 mile range cannons are kind of useless when you can be sniped by a torpedo bomber launched from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
The problem is, battleships are really really cool. However with aricraft carriers being the engineering center of the fleet (maybe build construction planes), they become a very important part none the less.
This. That's only because a real-life aircraft can compress enough damage to sink a battleship into a single load of torpedos and missiles. PA isn't IRL. Battleships will be present if you don't let that little extra condition happen. Also, there's the question of; do ACs build aircraft, or just house them? Building makes them mobile factories. Housing them makes them mobile fuelling/rearming stations.
In real life aircraft carriers are the center becuase of the way reality works. Airplanes have a pretty short range due to the size of earth. Typically in video games the size of the battlefield is soo small that a carrier is actually a determent due to the added micro required. An aircraft carrier would need to have a strong reason to exist in the first place and provide its services seamlessly. In our battles, with the battle space being much smaller battle ships reign supreme because the distances are more appropriate for hitting targets.
I enjoyed building aircraft from my aircraft carriers. the specifics of balance from this though... It means there is reduced need for sea borne aircraft plants as their is a naval option. Should they be able to have a full production suite? Should they be more efficient than aircraft plants (while i used them, it seemed weird that the most efficient way to build an air force was aircraft carriers, not all the time, but some of the time)
The 20 odd mile range guns of battleships of the 1940s are not modern. In the 1960s and 1980s ammunition with about 40-50 miles range was considered. Also the 32 MJ proposed 150mm rail gun the Navy is developing would have a range of almost 300 miles. It would be able to deliver a projectile cheaper and faster than a plane could, and there would be fewer possible countermeasures. There is no reason to assume that aircraft will always be the best choice. And we do not need to be realistic.
You know what would be a pretty cool twist to navy and carriers. Remove Naval Factories and allow Carriers to take their place. They could be similar to the Tempest/Atlantis in SupCom. If there are 2 tiers of naval units, then perhaps the 2nd tier could be an Adv. Naval Factory that would then have to be placed. This would allow lower tier navies the advantage of mobility while the higher tier would gain specialization while losing that mobility. Or the 2nd tier could also be a mobile unit as well and be balanced other ways. I just love the idea of being able to build on the move. This would also emphasis the importance of the carrier, as you would want to knock your enemy's carriers out quickly to stunt their naval production. If you wanted the carrier to be frontline focused, have it automatically repair nearby units for reduced costs and give it defensive weapons. That would encourage players to bring carriers with their fleets to help protect and repair fleets during combat.
As the air power balance thread discussed, aircraft may need a suitable AA defense structure to render them less all-powerful. As this happens, we will be needing more powerful naval weapons platforms. I think the result is we will need both good aircraft support ships, as well as battleships and other heavy weapons platforms.
Perhaps carriers could be built with a certain amount of planes already stored in them. Reduces the micro. I liked the carriers in supcom but I never felt like they were worth having, compared to just having my planes flying around normally.
As quoted from Battleship, "Battleships are like punching bags, they are designed to take hits" You drop ordinance on the flight deck of a AC, it will still float but at the same time you severed its purpose of being Carrier as to project air power.
Today, it's more submarines than aircraft carriers who would make battleships obsolete in a total war. In fact, they may even make aircraft carriers obsolete in a total war. They are stealthy and can sink any ship they can close on. The British managed to deter the Argentine Navy in the Falklands war by simply saying that they sent a submarine (and they didn't even bother with actually sending one). Fortunately, no total war seems to be close, and aircraft carriers, unlike battleships, are still the most useful in today's "asymmetric" wars. That said, PA will be quite different from today's naval warfare. For once, subs should be more balanced...
Are you thinking of a different falklands war by any chance? The RN sent several submarines and destroyed several AN ships with them. But I don't doubt they used that kind of misinformation at other points in the war.
