Looking for assistance in ranking WW2 warships (classes)

Hey folks,

I’m working on research for a trading card game that I’m designing and I’m hoping to be able to use your WW2 knowledge to help make it “right”.

The game (Reclaim Earth) takes place in the not too distant future, in a setting where the Earth has suffered a catastrophic event that has set it back to square one. Governments, structure, technology advancements and such are all dismantled. It’s Earth reborn basically in an altered state.

Game play will focus on players battling for and taking ownership of each territory, reclaiming the land.

One of the main driving forces of the game concept is that players will rediscover old technology and use that technology to build up their military power. The technology that they will find, in this phase of the game, will be WW2 era planes, ships and tanks.

This game has been in the works (scribbling notes on a pad) for quite awhile. The proper usage, and getting things right, of WW2 units is very important to the game and what I hope the game achieves in regards to enjoyment and authenticity. Before starting this project my knowledge of this area was low. But as I’ve researched the topics, I find it very interesting and I’m glad this project has brought me down that road.

I’m planning on using 150 ww2 military units. 50 planes. 50 ships. 50 tanks. I’ve decided to use units from 5 nations; USA, Germany, Soviet Union, Japan, and United Kingdom.

So… each nation will have a set of 30 units. (10 air, 10 sea, 10 land).

I’ve also drilled down further to have different unit types. And those types will have their own attack properties.

So, in essence, I’m looking for help with 2 main things. 1. The categorizing and inclusion of 50 warship classes and 2. a general ranking of those ships. I could go the easy route and piggy back existing games out there but going to the source would be more accurate / satisfying.

I’ll list the ship classes (50) that I’m planning on using as of now (but certainly have flexibility) and the family of unit type they fit into. When looking over the planes that were included think of what you’d want to see in a game, meaning… there may be more powerful rarer units than those listed but I wanted to include units based on importance, popularity, production numbers, relevance, etc. And I didn’t want to get into different variations per each unit type.











When I was planning on the ships to use, as mentioned, I wanted to use 10 from each nationality and to end up with sets of 5, 10, or 15 of each unit type to give all air units an organized structure. So that lead to some decisions, some ships got cut out in order to achieve that. But with that said… is there any gross omissions? Are there ships that are in the wrong category? Are there ships that should be replaced by another? This may look like a simple chart to those that are knowledgable in this area but it took a fair bit of research to get here seeing as I started from scratch. For me to just move forward as is, without getting validation from those in the know, would be doing the game and WW2 enthusiasts an injustice. So I kindly ask for your assistance here.

Probably most important is my second ask. How does each ship class stack up against their peers? For values I will be using 3 properties. 1. Attack speed. 2. Damage power / range. 3. Life / Durability.



Also, each class will have a general overall score. Although this overall score won’t be displayed to the player it will assist me with checking the overall effectiveness of the unit and making sure it resembles the rankings that I’m able to put together from research and hopefully this thread, and others like it. Any info that you want to share about speed or power or durability is great. But having someone go into all that is too much to ask. Even if you can give a general ranking of each unit that would be incredibly helpful. I have already ranked them but I don’t trust it.

Along with your own rankings, also helpful would be any links or resources that you think could help. I’ll add a list below to copy and paste to make giving feedback easier, along with the rank (1-10) that I had used up to this point and for testing purposes, knowing that some of them are way off. Another thing that I had to take into consideration when ranking was that there had to be a certain amount of 10’s, 9’s, etc in the full 150 card set, so that influenced some rankings.




Battleships 10
Yamato 10
Bismarck 10
Iowa 9
King George V 8
North Carolina 7
Scharnhorst 7
Gangut 5
Revenge 3
Queen Elizabeth 1
Kongo 1


Destroyers 15
Weapon 10
Fletcher 9
Ognevoy 8
Matsu 8
Battle 7
Benson 6
Gleaves 6
Zerstorer 1936 5
C (UK) 4
O-Z (UK) 4
Akizuki 3
Zerstorer 1934 2
Type 7 2
Yugumo 2
Leningrad 1



Heavy Cruisers 10
Baltimore 10
Admiral Hipper 9
Kirov 8
Katori 6
New Orleans 5
Maxim Gorkiy 5
Admiral 4
Deutschland 4
Tone 2
Takao 1



Light Cruisers 5
Cleveland 9
Town 7
Leipzig 5
Agano 3
Admiral Nakhimov 1


Submarines 10
Type XXI U-Boat 10
Balao 9
Gato 8
Type IX U-Boat 7
S (Sov) 6
U (UK) 6
Type VII U-Boat 4
M (Sov) 3
Type B/C/D 3
SC (Sov) 2




So that’s it. Hopefully I haven’t scared too many off with the super long post. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. This isn’t an established gaming company working on their next project. We’re just a couple of guys wanting to bring this game concept to life. Dependant on success, we have a few things planned for the future for this concept, but it starts with a card / board game. Its in play testing now. It’s very enjoyable. But we’re working on getting things right. Mechanics, unit strengths. It all has to be “right”.

So, what do you get out of it? Not much unfortunately. But if this game ever lands on your shelf, or anyone else’s, wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’ve contributed to the shaping of the authenticity of the WW2 units. I think that would be pretty neat. Also, I plan to reference any source that assisted in the making of the game. Also, if the board takes an interest in the project I can certainly keep anyone up to date with how things are moving along and in time, a launch date.

Maybe if all goes well, kids will be marvelling over old WW2 plane trading cards like they do with whatever fantasy based creatures they collect these days, taking an interest in the topic like you have.

That too, would be pretty neat.



If you’ve enjoyed reading this post and wish there were 2 more just like it, good news…. I’ve put / am putting separate threads in each of the air, sea, land forums.



Much thanks for taking the time,

Jesse Galloway

 

Battleships

http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

The North Carolinas aren't included but I'd rank them slightly higher than the South Dakotas.

 

I would rate Iowa at a 10 as it's really the only one that can challenge Yamato one on one.
Bismarck, Richeleu, KGV, SoDak, and North Carolina are all roughly on a par.
Right below them would be the VV, Nagato, Nelson, and Colorado classes.

Scharnhorst is well below those. I'm not sure I would want to be in one that was engaging a Kongo for instance and the Dunkerques would be a bit better as well IMO.

A quick look at the stats for the Kirov indicates it is rather over rated IMO same with the Gangut.

I notice no Brooklyn class CLs and you left out the German CL's as well not to mention the Atlantas.

It would help if you gave the nationality of the ships. For instance I'm not familiar with the DD "Weapon" and just googleing it doesn't turn up much.

Is the ranking for combat only or is there a utility factor included (range, reliabilty, etc)

 

Bismarck is often overrated; she was inferior to Iowa in every respect, comparable to European contemporaries like Richelieu. Her only advantage over South Dakota or North Carolina was a couple of knots speed, but her main armament was significantly lighter. KGV exceeded Bismarck in broadside weight and side, deck, and turret armor.

Scharnhorst was fast and took a lot of pounding to finish off once crippled, but her armament was dramatically inferior to real battleships.

The Revenge class as built were comparable to the QEs, just a couple of knots slower, but by WWII the QEs had been modernized to various degrees. QE herself and Valiant were the most extensively reconstructed, comparable to brand-new ships in most respects other than speed, and significantly superior to the Revenges.

Gangut was inferior to either British class originally or in their WWII configurations - and to most other WWII era capital ships.

Kongo's broadside and armor were lighter than most (though comparable to Gangut ) but their speed made them among the most useful of the modernized WWI-era ships.

Turning to cruisers, the Hipper class are another example of good-looking, overrated German ships, among the largest of WWII cruisers but with no outstanding characteristics. Neither armament nor speed were the best, armor was better than the 'tinclad' treaty cruisers but inferior to ships like Zara or Baltimore.

Kirov and Gorky were the same type, with 7.1" guns and smaller than other 'heavy' cruisers.

Katori was a small training ship with 5.5" guns and 18 knot speed, not even really a light cruiser.

 

The Standards improved dramatically with the upgrades as well. For that matter the Kongo's upgrades resulted in them being reclassified from battle cruisers to battleships I beleive. Still didn't hold up well to 16" super heavy AP rounds or even 8" er's in the wrong place.

I'm not sure that the battleship comparison linked above is all that accurate in view of contemporary knowledge but it does provide a good methodology for evaluating the various contenders of each class.

The details can make a huge difference as well. Compair for instance the various 6" guns. For the full tables see:
http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Penetration_index.htm
Looking at the best performing AP round at 20,000 yards using the effective penetration value for British armor we have:
US - 3.3
Japanese (6.1") - 3.1
British - 2.1
German (5.9) - 1.97

The Japanese heavy cruisers are tricky to rate as well. They tended to have light turret armor but the MK 93 gave them an highly uncertain but potentially devistating punch as well as an enhanced vulnerability.

Then there's the question of whether or not you want to really stick with designations such as CL. The US for example shows a huge variation between say the Brooklyns and the Atlantas. The former being a match for most heavy cruisers and the latter being extremly dangerous to anything without armor but of limited value vs armored targets (except for being the only US cruisers with torpedos)

 

Turning to destroyers, the Matsu was a useful economy type, but it wouldn't compare to fleet destroyers one-on-one. They had dual-purpose guns, but much of the value was lost by stepping back from the excellent Type 94 director to the much simpler Type 3. If DP is a criterion, why are the Akizukis rated so much lower?

I'm curious as to the rationale for naming the Weapon class the best destrouyer of the period. They did have DP main armament, but so did the Battles and most American DDs. They did receive the Squid, but that or similar ASW weapons were or could be fitted to many other classes.

Among more conventional destroyers, why do the Yugumos rate so low? What shortcomings did they have, other than those of Japanese ships in general, like radar or the lack of a good automatic AA gun like the 40mm?

 

I'm curious as well. They had comparable displacement to the Fletcher class. The Fletcher's had one more main battery tube of a larger caliber (5 vs 4, both tube number and caliber). The Fletchers were significantly faster with similar range, number of torpedo tubes shipped, excellent fire control systems and a heavier AA fit.

The US contemporary of the Weapon class would be the Sumner-Gearings. These were faster, longer ranged, a heavier AA fit than the Fletchers and had 50% more tubes in the main battery as compared to the Weapons class. (6 5in vs 4 4in). The British 4"/45 fired a 35-38lb shell at 2,660 fps, the 5"/38 fired a 53-55lb shell at 2,600 fps, both guns had a rate of fire of 15-20 rounds per minute. I'd say weight of broadside is very lopsided in favor of either US type.

 

It gets even stranger. Looking at the wiki pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon-class_destroyer
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle-class_destroyer
The Battle class which followed the Weapon class had 5 guns rather 4 and were bigger ships allbeit with a coule less torpdoes and the guns were a bit shorter.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_4-40_mk19.htm
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_4-45_mk16.htm
Especially considering the US 5" 38 was known as an accurate and robust gun whilte above 4.guns weren't know for either and the fact that the British commander of HMS Delhi rated them at 25 RPM until the ready rounds were expended would indicate that the US gun was significantly better.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-38_mk12.htm
The Battle class also seams to be 3 or 4 knots faster than the Weapon and the US DDs built during the 30's and 40's with one or two exceptions were 5 to 5 knots faster.

 

The Weapon class were a deliberately 'low-end' design, complementary to the Battles. There was a sort of tug-of-war between the construction of large destroyers like the Tribals or Ms and smaller ones that could be built in numbers, such as the War Emergency flotillas. The closest US equivalent would probably be the continued construction of the Benson class through1943; once fully mobilized, we had the shipbuilding capacity to go 'all first class'. I'll be interested to hear Zedder's rationale for rating the Weapons a 10.

The wiki article mentions making use of shorter slipways; that was also the reasoning for the Castle class corvettes, although they were built in commercial yards. I've run across the same thing in the days of sail, building ships like 50-gun fourth-rates that could fill in for ships of the line on duties outside the battle fleet.

Oddly enough the 'economy' Weapon and Matsu classes were the first in their navies to have unit machinery.

 

Awesome link. Thanks.

 

Hey Carronade, thanks for the feedback. I'll give a better reply to each post later in the day but I'll address this for now.

I made up a wheel with the numbers 1-10 on it. I then gave it a spin and recorded the results.

Actually that's not true, but as you can clearly see, I'm leaning on your advice and knowledge pretty hard. Specifically about the weapon's ranking. I'm not sure without digging into notes. I'll assume however I got there it was incorrect .


Keep the feedback coming. I appreciate it.

Take note of Takao's response over in the air ranking thread. If you guys could do some thing like that, that would be incredible helpful.

 

So, in the game, players have more or less randomly discovered surviving items of WWII technology, so for example they might have found a British Revenge class battleship but not an American New Mexico?

Should we assume WWI era ships like QE or Kongo are in their WWII modernized configurations?

 

That becomes a very critical question and if you are looking at classes of ships do you choose the most advanced or not? Look at the differences in performance at Surgao strait due mostly to the type of radar fire control on the US battleships.

 

Do you have something against aircraft carriers?

 

I was wondering the same thing, since Zedder's aircraft list includes several carrier aircraft.

However, since he is using 5 factions, and of, those, Germany and the Soviet Union did not have any operational aircraft carriers, their implementation into his game may be problematic.

 

Although there are ideas for future stuff, no... no air craft carriers for the launch of the card game.

Just concentrating on collecting info and graphics for now. I'll look for other places to gather rankings feedback as we're still quite light on it. But if anyone wants to give it a go....


ACC's are up the sleeve for another day

 

As long as we understand that a single aircraft carrier with a moderately competent air group could seriously ruin the day, or at the least make it extremely unpleasant, for any one of your listed gun platforms without the ship ever coming over the horizon.

Added thought . . . perhaps a wild card in the deck.

 

Carriers could be represented by an enableing card that would either allow naval aircraft or give them bonuses. Remember as stated in some of the other threads the game is to be a card game.

Which brings up a question is it to be a constructed deck game or a standard deck game?

 

Here's my crack at it, certainly subject to discussion, not completely sure of all of them in my own mind. There are five each of ratings 1-10 which I understand was your intent.

I'm not sure what an Admiral class heavy cruiser is; did you perhaps omit a word? Gave it a 1 for now.

Battleships 10
Yamato 10
Iowa 10
North Carolina 9
Bismarck 8
King George V 7
Queen Elizabeth 6
Kongo 5
Scharnhorst 4
Revenge 2
Gangut 1

Destroyers 15
Fletcher 10
Battle 9
Benson 8
Gleaves 8
Weapon 8
Akizuki 7
Yugumo 7
Zerstorer 1934 5
Zerstorer 1936 5
C (UK) 4
O-Z (UK) 4
Ognevoy 3
Matsu 3
Type 7 2
Leningrad 1

Heavy Cruisers 10
Baltimore 10
Deutschland 9
Takao 6
Tone 5
Admiral Hipper 4
New Orleans 4
Kirov 2
Maxim Gorkiy 2
Katori 1
Admiral 1

Light Cruisers 5
Cleveland 9
Town 7
Leipzig 5
Agano 3
Admiral Nakhimov 1

Submarines 10
Type XXI U-Boat 10
Balao 9
Gato 8
Type IX U-Boat 7
S (Sov) 6
U (UK) 6
Type VII U-Boat 6
M (Sov) 3
Type B/C/D 3
SC (Sov) 2

 

I think I rate the Yugumo a bit higher. The combination of 6 5" guns and type 93 torpedoes (with reloads) gives her a pretty impressive punch for a DD. The Akizuki is optimized for AA so it depends a bit whether or that will play. I personally would want to see both surface and AA ratings for the various vessels.