'Battle' Cruisers.

[CmdrBluejeans]

Being so used to designing ships on the light-medium-heavy axis, I've never really stopped to consider the 'Battle Cruiser', but now that I'm working on some Klingon and unique race ship designs for my 'Star Trek: the High Frontier' series (Episode 66, 'Friendly Fire', will be run in about an hour), I have a question about the Battle Cruiser designation for a ship.

A couple of 'cost breaks' exist which seem to apply only on the light/heavy axis -- Light/Fast/Far variants of ships get a discount on Warp drive, while Heavy ships get a discount on missles.

I guess my question is: if 'Far' is lumped in with Light and Fast, is 'Battle' lumped in with Heavy?

Should a 'Battle Cruiser' get the cost discount both on Beam Weapons (for Heavy ships) and Missle Weapons (for Cruisers)? How about Exploratory Cruisers? Where do we shove these?

I mean, realistically, a Battle Cruiser *is* a Heavy Cruiser that's even more-so, IMHO. But ... still.


CMDRBJ

[Owen E Oulton]

Historically, a battlecruiser is a battleship sized warship with light armour and fewer weapons than a normal battleship in order to mazimise speed - class it as a "light battleship" rather than a cruiser.

[Tas II]

I always thought that Battlecruisers were Battleships that carried less armour, to aid speed. They tended to have fewer guns as a rule, but that was not always the case.

The main difference between a battlecruiser and battleship was armour, and speed. A battlecruiser used her speed rather than armour for defence.
HMS Hood (sunk by Bismark in WWII) was technically a Battlecruiser awaiting an armour upgrade to make her a Battleship. She carried 8x 15in. guns and 12x 5.5in guns as main and secondary armament.
The Prince Of Wales (WWII KG5 Class Battleship) had 10x 14in. main armament and 16x 5.25in. secondaries.

Cheers

Tas

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by CmdrBluejeans
I guess my question is: if 'Far' is lumped in with Light and Fast, is 'Battle' lumped in with Heavy?

Should a 'Battle Cruiser' get the cost discount both on Beam Weapons (for Heavy ships) and Missle Weapons (for Cruisers)? How about Exploratory Cruisers? Where do we shove these?

It's specifically listed in the book. A Battle Cruiser (CB) only receives a "discount" on Missile Weapons (NG, pg 141, bottom Table 9.11: Missile Weapon Costs).

If you own Starships, CBs get another "discount" for alien-specific weapons, such as the Klingons. (See Starships, pg 25, bottom Table 1.22: Alien Missile Weapon Costs.) Also in Starships, the standard Missile Weapons (Starships, pg 19, Table 1.15: Missile Weapon Costs) gives CBs more options. A Klingon CB (from "Starships") can really get some nasty weapons and outgun a comparable Federation starship, essentially becoming a missile cruiser.

A vessel is only considered "heavy," "fast," or "light" if its classification specifically indicates it as such. Hence, a CB gets none of those cost breaks.

[Identity Crisis]

The rules list the Battle Cruiser in the Cruiser meta-group. To accurately model historical Battle Cruiser you would need to call it both Heavy and Fast, but that's a bit on the munchkin side.

So a category of Fast Warship might suit better. They would _not_ get the large warship bonus to shield grids as traditionally Battle Cruisers were lightly armoured.

Real naval architects found designing battle cruisers rather tricky as well...

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by CmdrBluejeans
How about Exploratory Cruisers? Where do we shove these?

Woops, missed this one. An Exploratory Cruiser (CEX) also has its own entries. Actually, it's identical to the CB.

The designation essentially exists to model Federation and other species with a 'politically correct' name. This is why we had to create an entire bracket for the UFP (Explorers); the UFP doesn't field 'battleships'. (See Excelsior-class)

[Identity Crisis]

OTOH... the rules as written and as outline by Don are perfect for a battle cruiser based on the ex-Soviet Kirov class - a big (very big) missile cruiser.

Just remember to give is really naff reliability rating for the warp core. ;-)


And the canonical Battle Cruiser (the D-7) seems to be something else again - smaller than a Heavy Cruiser but equally well armed (and not necessarily with missiles).

[Don Mappin]

Originally posted by Identity Crisis
And the canonical Battle Cruiser (the D-7) seems to be something else again - smaller than a Heavy Cruiser but equally well armed (and not necessarily with missiles).

That's one of the fun things about starship design; people can have different views and come up with interesting takes.

In the case of the D-7, I always thought the inclusion of the cloaking device is the "big thing" that made them dangerous. Until then the D-7 was just a tough cruiser. (I know this is wildly open to speculation.)

In Coda starship design there are really two ways to go about reflecting these vessel differences: build to a class' strengths (ie. load a CB up with cheap missiles) or use the savings to defray the cost, spending on other systems to differentiate the vessel. For example, building a CB with a standard missile complement but using the 4-5 points of space that you saved on additional structure, a better shield, faster engines, etc. Something cool that makes you go "whoa." ("Hey, that thing's pretty darn fast for a cruiser!")