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FatR -> RE: RA 5.0 (11/22/2012 9:20:10 PM)
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Another note on Agano-class cruisers...
1)At this stage we might as well call it Oyodo-class, because the armament is almost that of Oyodo built as a normal CL.
2)This raises a couple questions, first of them is the price. There are now 8 of them in the construction queue and available at the start. Agano was a very budget cruiser, save for its flak guns - gunhouses instead of true turrets, and with two barrels instead of planned three, reusal of old 152mm guns, a relatively simple protections scheme (with no antitorpedo protection, although it is not clear if said protection on Oyodo was of any use, she was done for by near misses and beached due to a near miss before that) and powerplant. Oyodo reused old guns too, but otherwise was more expensive. Speaking of that, 8 cruisers in their current shape will need 72 155mm guns, but only 36 were built for Mogamis.
3)Even if we get around price and lack of suitable shipyards (the latter can be circumvented by planning and starting the construction earlier, I think), I'm not sure if it is technically possible to place torpedo mounts on centerline in an Oyodo-style hull, that has enough space for 100mm flak guns. It is 1.4m wider.
4)Tactical function. Original Aganos were built to replace obsolete (and increasingly decrepit) 5500-ton cruisers as destroyer leaders. For their small displacement (slightly more than half of a Cleveland) they were adequate (we, Jap players, primarily think they suck because in the stock we just get too few ships in all, and when our ships can't go against the most common Allied ones one on one this seems an insult to injury) and sufficiently simple to be constructed in wartime. I'm not sure they were worth the investment of men and materials, though. Their size was inadequate for placing sufficient medium-calibre AA armament and they were about as vulnerable as DDs to torpedo hits. Building moderately powerful light cruisers like the Swiftsure class (and maximally powerful battleships/battlecruisers) is arguably the best course of action post-treaties, interbellum CAs just ended up an attept to create pseudo-battleships on limited displacement. So technically what is present in RA as the Agano class is not far from optimum (assuming technical and industrial vialbility, which I doubt above). But what was rationalization for that?
This is not a call for any immediate changes... rather a material for discussion, maybe.
P.S.: On a brighter note, I learned that my earlier doubts about placing so many Type 98 twins everywhere were unfounfed. An open mount, like those employed on RL Oyodo, has almost exactly the same weight as a 127/40 Type 89 mount.
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