What purpose do escorts serve?

[patyrn]

I've been wondering this for a while. I'm asking not just from a gameplay standpoint, but also a historical one.

Apart from the fleet bonuses granted by screen and scout roles, what would you consider their purpose to be? The only "escorty" type thing I've noticed them doing is meat-shielding ASGMs.

Since I'm fairly certain escort ships in real fleets aren't there to body-block torpedos, what role do they serve? Is that role well-modeled in CB?

A destroyer escort only needed to be able to maneuver relative to a slow convoy (which in WW II would travel at 10 to 12 knots), defend against aircraft, detect, pursue and attack submarines.

^ From the wikipedia entry on destroyers

I would say the equivalent to submarines in CBF is stealth ships, and fighters are fighters.

But since stealth destroyers pose virtually no threat to large ships unless fielded in huge numbers, and since fighters are easily dealt with by the large ships on their own, it seems that the entire role of an escort is unnecessary.

Thoughts?

[TheDreadnought]

I'm not sure what your question is here. You're kinda touching on a lof of different questions. Let me see if I can sort it out:

Is your question:
What role do escorts play in wet-navy fleets? Screening and scouting mostly. . . A lot of protecting the carriers w/ point defense in modern fleets. . . defending against subs, conveying orders, and so forth in WWI/WWII fleets.

Is your question:
What role do escorts play in CBF? Well you listed two of them youself, well - screening and scouting. You'll notice scouts in addition to stealth destroyers, are also effective at preventing stealth mine deployment - which can be lethal. And of course the missile and fighter interception. Plus the targeting bonuses and so forth. And finally they can be fast and highly maneuverable which can provide tactical advantage in gameplay.

Is your question:
Do escorts in CBF exactly match current or previous duties in wet navy fleets? The answer is dunno. . . maybe?. Not sure even how that would be possible in a wet navy vs. a starship game. Does it matter?

Is your question:
Do escorts add value to a CBF fleet? The answer is yes, absolutely.

Is your question:
Do escorts provide an "escorty feel" in their CBF gameplay. I think so.

[patyrn]

Yeah my questions are pretty nebulous in my head. Just something I've been musing about. I've just felt like 100% of the reason I've built small ships is to meat-shield ASGMs. I don't have the tech for scouts, so I don't have access to that benefit.

What role do escorts play in CBF? Well you listed two of them youself, well - screening and scouting. You'll notice scouts in addition to stealth destroyers, are also effective at preventing stealth mine deployment - which can be lethal. And of course the missile and fighter interception. Plus the targeting bonuses and so forth. And finally they can be fast and highly maneuverable which can provide tactical advantage in gameplay.

I haven't found much need to intercept missiles. Infact I think we've used ECM once. Missiles from long range are easier to simply dodge, and from short range there's no time to ECM them.

If the enemy fleet has many fighters it's much more effective to just load flak on your large ships than to try to shoot them down. Flak is murderous.

Their other fleet-effects are like support-auras which don't seem to spring from the ship mechanics themselves.

Just to spitball an alternative to make escorts essential for protecting large ships:

Make fighters significantly more lethal for large ships. Perhaps make them capable of targeting ship systems so they'd be scary for large ships, but much less overall impact on small ships.

Make smaller ships able to fire upon fighters during the fighter movement phase, if they pass through some radius. Also let them fire upon ASGMs using their PD.

I think something like the above would make small ships feel truly essential and it would let situations emerge that are cool, like sending in your CAs to blow a path to the enemy BBs for your fighter-wings.

[toaster]

Interesting ideas, personally I've found the PD bonus for having a couple of CLS in the middle of my fleet very useful. Also played a scenario where I had overwhelming force but all my opponent had to do was get one ship off, I was terrified of a bunch of rdf or scout DD's getting around me and making a run for the jump point.

Why don't you try a few games with the mods suggested and report back on the effect, someone already posted on boosting fighters by allowing them to attack at two hex range if you add only against capital ships that might give you the fighter boost your after (3 strike squadrons on your rear shields can hurt).

Robert

[patyrn]

Interesting ideas, personally I've found the PD bonus for having a couple of CLS in the middle of my fleet very useful. Also played a scenario where I had overwhelming force but all my opponent had to do was get one ship off, I was terrified of a bunch of rdf or scout DD's getting around me and making a run for the jump point.

Why don't you try a few games with the mods suggested and report back on the effect, someone already posted on boosting fighters by allowing them to attack at two hex range if you add only against capital ships that might give you the fighter boost your after (3 strike squadrons on your rear shields can hurt).

Robert

Yeah the PD bonus is excellent, but doesn't feel very organic.

Certain scenarios will definitely make the maneuverability a much bigger factor, but in most battles a DD being able to out-maneuver a BB doesn't mean much.

I'll be trying out these changes this weekend, once I whip up some solid numbers for what it takes for fighters to kill a system, and etc. I'll report back with my findings.

I know none of what I'm trying to "fix" is necessarily a flaw in CB at all, I just prefer more of a combined-arms feel than a big ships + some other stuff feel.

[talkos]

I may not be the word of god on this, but here's my take on the situation. Screen ships will vary in their usefulness depending on tech levels used, which jives relatively well with real world examples.

There were times in our history that having the largest ships with the most guns was the theory of the day, and that smaller ships should not be involved in the line-of-battle at all.

Then you have the development of torpedoes and the response of creating Torpedo Boat Destroyers, which were essentially there to body block the torpedo boats and destroy them before they could close with the fleet.

Moving onto WWII you have the submarines coming into the fore and the need for those escort ships. Here we see subs mainly as attacking war material and supply lines, although there were a few quite dramatic attacks on capital ships, generally those had less success. Which seems to reflect CBF pretty well. The major issue with how CBF models Scout ships is their inability to recloak until the next shooting phase, as such they must be considered expendable.

Playing around with the shipbuilder, I came up with a very nice 63 ton Scout DD loaded with an alpha strike of 3 ASGMs and a little gatling gun to top it off. The major stumbling block to more being the fixed cost of fire control. Not a great threat to a fully functional battleship, but two or three would definitely make a bad day for a damaged ship, or a transport that you have to escort, or a weakly defended carrier. Having either that or stealth mines appear on one's tailpipe is the price one pays for not having screen ships.

Today a lot of the ships designated as Destroyers or Frigates are really Guided Missile cruisers with a multi-mission role.

You mentioned that you played without the tech for scouts. Personally I think that if you don't have the feel that you want, go ahead and start to vary the tech levels and see if that helps. And then as other people have suggested, try out a few of the major house rules.