Land based airstrike is almost entirely useless IME.
Uh, what? And extra what, since CAP is strictly automated.
Carriers also launch recon automatically exactly the same way. However, you almost certainly want more than one recon flight in the day. Which you flat can't get from an airbase since it's automated, whereas you certainly can launch as many recon sweeps as you want off a carrier - albeit quite awkwardly.
I've got my few victories from them. In conjunction with proper gunships but still.
Not sure what you're trying to do with a cheap light cruiser swarm - is it aiming to close and kill larger ships with 6" gunfire? Or strategic blockade/raiding?
Light cruisers are quite bad for ASW. A destroyer does more for less and a corvette can be even more economical.
If you've got to have a force under air attack without CAP, light cruisers might be the best composition. They're too agile to be easy to hit and having some armor means they have some resistence to the near-miss effects that can kill destroyers. And they can carry a good amount of AA.
I haven't really been reading it, but Angry Imperialist Spreadsheet Hell certainly had that happen in at least one of the four completed runs so far. (The fourth one.) I'd want more detail, personally, but it's there.
Thanks, but I tried that one, and didn't like the format. Appreciate the recommendation, though.
Ton per ton it is really worse than a DD. You can make them identical and KE will somehow eat more tonnage. (in machinery)
You build a boat.
ASW trade protection (including but not limited to the fast wartime conversions) and cheap colonial gunboats. And late-era you can use them to make missile boats that don't also carry torpedoes. But that's it, if you want KEs to have a significant role in your active fleet before the missile era you're simply making a mistake.
Oh it is already balooning out alright. The missile DDs are now at 2200 ton in 1955. When I was fighting soviets in 1944 my mainstay designs are 1800 ton
That's one of their valid uses, yeah. They're much cheaper than cruisers for the same effect there. You can use them in wartime too, though certainly if they get pulled into a battle against enemy cruisers it'll go poorly for them.
Yeah in theory you can use torpedoes to circumvent CIWS.
If you just want weapons that anti-missile stuff doesn't stop, cannons never actually stop being usable. I've only played one run to the end, but I did engage in gunplay all the way to the last battles.
