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> and then your big ships would fight their big ships, while your medium ships fought their medium ships, and the smalls fought the smalls. big ships, medium

by canal 8y ago

> and then your big ships would fight their big ships, while your medium ships fought their medium ships, and the smalls fought the smalls. big ships, medium ships, small ships ≤ big ships, big ships, big ships Thus (assuming big ships are more advantageous) show up to the battlefield with all big ships.

derefr 8y ago
If you have infinite resources, sure, just make infinite big ships. You make medium and small ships because they’re more cost-efficient: they can turn the same number of dollars into more mobile gun/missile barrels (usually at the cost of armour—the little ships are like DPS “glass cannons.”) But whereas a DPS player in an MMO game gets protected by a “tank” player while they do as much concentrated damage as possible, conventional historical military doctrine actually had the small ships act as a “screen” for the big ships—effectively having the DPS “tanking” for the “tank”! Luckily, we’ve worked out how crazy this was in the last 80 years, and modern doctrine for combined use of air and sea materiel actually concentrates fire and has the most durable units protecting the strike units (basically by having the sea units protect the air units from below, recapitulating the millennia-old role of mobile artillery in protection of—and area denial for—infantry.)
dkarl 8y ago
That assumes all your navy does is fight pitched ship-to-ship naval battles. Historically, countries also needed ships for important functions such as reconnaissance, communication, blockades, harassment of enemy shipping, protection of friendly shipping, coastal raids, coastal security, transport of troops and supplies, and control of smuggling. In fact, the only reason you even care about winning big pitched naval battles is to control the seas so your navy could execute those functions better than the other navy! So you definitely need all those small and medium-sized ships, and in the case of a big battle, you wouldn't automatically send them away. You'd bring them to the fight as long as you believed their impact would outweigh the risk and trouble of bringing them. Source: I read a couple of Horatio Hornblower novels a decade ago.

by canal 8y ago

derefr 8y ago

If you have infinite resources, sure, just make infinite big ships. You make medium and small ships because they’re more cost-efficient: they can turn the same number of dollars into more mobile gun/missile barrels (usually at the cost of armour—the little ships are like DPS “glass cannons.”) But whereas a DPS player in an MMO game gets protected by a “tank” player while they do as much concentrated damage as possible, conventional historical military doctrine actually had the small ships act as a “screen” for the big ships—effectively having the DPS “tanking” for the “tank”! Luckily, we’ve worked out how crazy this was in the last 80 years, and modern doctrine for combined use of air and sea materiel actually concentrates fire and has the most durable units protecting the strike units (basically by having the sea units protect the air units from below, recapitulating the millennia-old role of mobile artillery in protection of—and area denial for—infantry.)

dkarl 8y ago

That assumes all your navy does is fight pitched ship-to-ship naval battles. Historically, countries also needed ships for important functions such as reconnaissance, communication, blockades, harassment of enemy shipping, protection of friendly shipping, coastal raids, coastal security, transport of troops and supplies, and control of smuggling. In fact, the only reason you even care about winning big pitched naval battles is to control the seas so your navy could execute those functions better than the other navy! So you definitely need all those small and medium-sized ships, and in the case of a big battle, you wouldn't automatically send them away. You'd bring them to the fight as long as you believed their impact would outweigh the risk and trouble of bringing them. Source: I read a couple of Horatio Hornblower novels a decade ago.