Originally by: the plague

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Edited by: the plague on 19/02/2010 21:41:46

Originally by: Nekopyat

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Actually, IRL battleships dropped the bulk of their point defense and completely dropped medium guns as they matured. The last battleships in use (not counting the rather silly re-purposing in the 80s that were closer to ordinance barges then battleships) were built around the 'big guns only' design with only a single class of weapon. Point defense was left to smaller support ships that could do it more effectively A battleship out on its own was a dead target, but they generally had support fleets. They were rather specialized ships.

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Not sure what you're reading, but an Iowa class battleship sported a fearsome array of secondary weapons throughout WWII. Some of this was dual purpose, designed to defend the ship from either surface or airborne threats, but as the war went on the emphasis switched to the anti-aircraft role. This consisted of 10 Mark 28 Mod 2 twin gun mounts and 4 Mark 37s. The Mark 28s were eventually replaced with Mark 56s, which could shoot down modern aircraft more effectively. Four of the Mark 56s were then removed to give the ship long rang strike capability in the form of a Tomahawk missile battery.

While it's certainly true a battleship got plenty of point defense/anti-aircraft fire from its supporting fleet, the ship was anything but defenseless against smaller ships and planes.

Originally by: Nekopyat

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They were rather specialized ships.

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Yes, they were specialized, but not to the point of utter uselessness in any role but bombardment. As I said, EVE's ships are intentionally gimped because of gameplay considerations, and it would make no sense whatsoever to build such super-specialized ships in reality. A carrier ought to be more like Battlestar Galactica, but doing so would take EVE combat in a direction the devs don't want to go, so nearly all the ships in the game are specialized.

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