Shipbucket

In my opinion I'd go for a larger number of smaller carriers though not as small as the CdG. Something CVA-01 sized or there abouts like this Might be an idea with the notion of carrying troops on them and deploying them from it if the need arises.

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AU Projects: | Banbha et al. | New England: The Divided States
Blood and Fire

Sorry for the stream of consciousness approach here, but let us first look at political/doctrinal issues, then the technical ones.

Are you deploying globally? How many stations are you theoretically going to have to maintain (The US likes to maintain 3 - Two in the Arabian Sea/Persian Gulf/Med and one in the Western Pacific)? What is your carrier doctrine?

When you look at carrier size, you get more bang for your buck in terms of deliverable power for fewer large carriers than you do for many small ones. This is because with many small carriers you have to duplicate a lot of expensive gear (radars, AEW planes, things like that) over the larger number of hulls. That said, above about the size of a Ford class you hit rapidly diminishing returns as the air wing starts becoming almost unmanageable (this is if you have ~ 75 planes). The downside to larger carriers is that they can't be in as many places at the same time - but that's only half right as we'll see later.

Now, the next question is nuclear or conventional? If you go nuclear, you put a floor on your size at about the size of CdG - any smaller and things like layout become hard to manage (nuclear carriers have refueling hatches that further complicate the layout of the strength deck). If you go conventional, you don't have this floor, but the pressures for a larger carrier are even greater if you need to sustain operations a long way from home. For conventional carriers, if you want to be able to do sustained simultanous launch and recovery, you've got a size floor around 30k tons - the BSAC 220 in the archive is an example of a semi-modern carrier of about that size.

Also, if you follow the US model of a global presence without forward basing (the one carrier in Japan doesn't count), nuclear carriers let you maintain a deployment of 2 carriers out of every 5 that you have. Conventional carriers are limited to one out of every three. It's not a huge difference, but it does have follow on effects on your numbers. Because it makes sense to make larger carriers nuclear, you would have to maintain six conventional carriers of the same size to match the deployability of 5 CVNs.

Now, as for smaller carriers like CVA-1 or CVV, you get advantages in reduced building costs, but you get less capability for the same number of hulls. That said, if you can't afford a lot of large (80k+ ton) ships, it's not a bad size.

One other note - what is the life span and build rate of the fleet? If you take the life span, and divide by how often you built, that's how many you have. Ideally, you time your construction out to keep the crews that build the ships continuously employed so that you don't lose institutional knowledge. It's how the US does the carrier force, and how the French do most of their navy. It has the advantage of keeping costs to spin up projects lower while the disadvantage of costing money even when it looks like nothing is being done.

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𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐍𝐄𝐓- 𝑻𝒐 𝑪𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝑺𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆

Basically it's that larger carriers are more cost-effective, but more decks means more flexibility as obviously one ship can't be at two places at the same time and from total carrier force some ships will be always undergonig maintenance/refit or will be "somewhere else" than needed.
As for their particular size, it also depends on what are capabilities of Your enemies and what threats are to be met. If it's mostly "colonial policing" of sorts then perhaps CdG-sized ships might be enough, but might not be enough for large scale conflicts with sizeable and advanced enemies.

So generally - yeah, I'd go for higher numbers of medium-sized carriers.

An idea of the world according to me...



Red is the Kingdom
Pink-ish are colonies and possessions
Orange is Independent Dominions within the Commonwealth (think Canada, Australia, etc)
Green is the Prussian Alliance and their possessions
Beige is everybody else and "unclaimed" lands

quick-n-dirty map, but it gives an idea of what I need to cover with my navy, I hope.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

I like that map!

A BC class I've been fiddling with. A planned class of 4 ships laid down in 1936 and 37, only 1 was completed as a battlecruiser, the Sentinel. 2 more were converted to aircraft carriers, and the 4th was not completed, the hull being sunk as a breakwater in 1947. They were intended for commerce raiding initially, but this role by the late 1930's had been relegated almost totally to submarines. The class was a compromise from the start, being armed like a battleship but armoured like a heavy cruiser. Basically, overgunned and underarmoured. The Sentinel spent the majority of her career as an escort ship for carrier groups, including a 9 month stint in 1943 escorting the Gargoyle and Incubus, her 2 half-sister CV's.


Displacement: 28,559 t standard; 31,318 t normal; 33,525 t full load
Dimensions: Length: 743.00 ft OA / 715.00 ft WL: Width: 102.00 ft: Draft: 30.00 ft
Armour:
- Belts: Width (max) Length (avg) Height (avg)
Main: 8.00" / 203 mm 420.00 ft / 128.02 m 31.00 ft / 9.45 m
Ends: 2.00" / 51 mm 250.00 ft / 76.20 m 10.00 ft / 3.05 m

- Gun armour: Face (max) Other gunhouse (avg) Barbette/hoist (max)
Main: 10.0" / 254 mm 6.00" / 152 mm 8.00" / 203 mm
2nd: 4.00" / 102 mm 2.00" / 51 mm 3.00" / 76 mm

- Armour deck: 4.00" / 102 mm, Conning tower: 10.00" / 254 mm

Machinery:
Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
Geared drive, 4 shafts, 213,350 shp / 159,159 Kw = 34.00 kts
Range 11,500nm at 15.00 kts
Bunker at max displacement = 4,966 tons

Complement:
1,176 - 1,530

The armament (as it currently stands) is:
6 x 16"/50 (3 x 2)
16 x 4.5"/45 (8 x 2)
26 x 40mm (2 x 4; 9 x 2)
22 x 20mm (22 x 1)
16 x 12.7mm (4 x 4)

beginnings of the basic layout of the CV conversions.


ok, whatcha y'all think? what needs changing, what can stay, what needs to be relegated to the dustbin of crappy ideas?
Obviously, neither are completed as yet, still a number of details to be added, but I wanted some opinions first before I got into that region.

(EDIT)And yes, I just realized that I seem to have forgot to put propeller shafts on the darn things.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

Like it Zephyr, but some quibbles. Firstly the funnel on the BC looks too modern IMHO, and I think you'll want to consider making it taller as well.
Secondly your ship is stated to be as in 1939, but with all those 1945 and later radars, and small AA guns, seems wrong to me (although I do realize it is AU, it seems somewhat wrong, out of place like).

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

oops. meant to put the CXAM radar on there, got the wrong one apparently. You're right about the twin 40's. I was looking at that myself, and think I'll be swapping those out for earlier variants.

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor

a few changes



40mm has been upped to 34 (2 x 4; 9 x 2), radar swapped out, funnels altered (but incomplete. just "penciled in" for now)

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"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Seventh Doctor