Welcome to the third installment of my series that examines how the steampunk universe of Dystopian Wars compares to real-world naval history! The first two installments discussed naval technology in general, and also focused on the big boys; the battleships and dreadnoughts.  After I posted those first two posts, I got some valuable feedback regarding the length and focus of their content. So, hopefully I’ve addressed those concerns this time around!

For this post, I’m going to go to the opposite end of the scale and talk about destroyers. First, I’m going to discuss the origins, technical evolution, and history of the destroyer type from its origins to the present day. Next, I will briefly discuss the qualities of the various DW destroyer classes, and see how they fit into their faction and the game as a whole. Finally, I will compare the DW destroyers to their real-life counterparts.

What is a Destroyer, Anyway?

As the name of the type suggests, destroyers were designed to, well, destroy things. But what things? As it turns out, those things were torpedo boats. As I briefly mentioned in my last post, the self-propelled torpedo (previous torpedoes were basically mines) was developing rapidly in the years leading up to WW I. This led some naval theorists to argue that small, fast torpedo-carrying craft could be a cheap counter to the massive battleship fleets the great powers of the world were constructing.

Now, as you can imagine, this did not sit well among the great powers that had spent enormous amounts of treasure and resources on a battlefleet. Their answer to this threat was to create a new type of small, fast, but seaworthy escort ship that could escort the battlefleet and carried a heavy enough armament to fend off an attack by enemy torpedo boats. This new type was rather unimaginatively dubbed the “Torpedo Boat Destroyer,” which was rapidly shortened to just “Destroyer,” in the same way that “Line of Battle-ship” became just “Battleship.” Ironically, it wasn’t long before these ships acquired torpedo armament of their own; thereafter, destroyers were used as a means of attacking an enemy fleet with torpedoes, as well as defending a friendly fleet from such attacks.

In the years leading up to World War I, destroyers slowly grew in displacement and seaworthiness. By 1914, the average destroyer displaced around 1,000 tons, and mounted both guns and torpedoes. During the war, the destroyer came to fill another role; that of convoy escort. This was brought about by the improvement of the submarine as a commerce raiding weapon; defeating the German U-boat threat required convoys, convoys required escorting, and the only type of ship numerous enough for effective convoy escorting were destroyers. From that point on, anti-submarine work became a key mission for destroyers.

In the interwar years, destroyer design continued to advance, as did the weapons they were armed with. During the 1930s, the displacement of destroyers almost doubled, to 1,800 tons or more. This increase in size was necessitated by improvements in range, protection, and armament. This trend continued through World War II; in 1945, for example, the United States fielded destroyers that displaced over 2,600 tons. During World War II, as naval aviation came into its own, destroyers also began to be used as air defense platforms.

In the early Cold War era, the basic design for the destroyer didn’t change much. This was partly because WW II ships continued to make up a bulk of the destroyer force; some of these ships lasted into the 1970s. Various improvements to the electrical and weapons systems were introduced, and early guided missile systems were fitted to a few ships, but for the most part these destroyers were easily recognizable as the descendents of the World War II “tin cans.” This changed rapidly in the later part of the Cold War; destroyers began to grow rapidly in size, and were fitted more and more heavily as guided missile ships. Destroyers have now become capital ships in their own right, operated only by the largest navies. An excellent example is the Arleigh Burke class of the US Navy, which are the size of WW II-era light cruisers and have many times the firepower.

Destroyers in Dystopian Wars

This discussion will, naturally, only be able to cover the 6 destroyer designs that have been released so far as of this writing. I’m also going to be referring to them mainly by the abbreviated name of their faction, as trying to spell out each faction or go by class names alone would rapidly become too confusing!

Rather than look at each individual faction’s destroyer, I think for this purpose it would be more worthwhile to examine some general characteristics and see where each faction falls:

• Speed: The average across all 6 designs is 12″, with the PE being a bit faster at 13″ and the RoF bringing up the rear at 9″. Typically, the speed of a facton’s destroyer is equal to the speed of its frigate, though the RoF destroyer is 2″ slower.
• DR/CR: The standard seems to be the same DR3/CR5 as the frigates, though there are a few exceptions. The FSA get their usual +1 DR, for example, while the EotBS get their +1 CR.
• AP/AA/CC: This values actually vary quite a bit; no 2 designs have the exact same stats in these areas. Values range from 1 to 3, though only the PE design has a rating of 3 in more than one category.
• Armament: Here is where the various destroyer designs really begin to separate out.  The KoB design has a heavy torpedo armament, with a gun as a secondary weapon (sound familiar?). The FSA, EotBS, and RoF are all rocket firing platforms, though the FSA and EotBS do have guns as well. The CoA and PE ships, on the other hand, are guns-only.
• MARs: Every destroyer class currently in the game gets “Pack Hunter,” which seems to point towards using these ships in large squadrons. All 6 designs also have “Small Target,” which is fitting given the similarities between their stat lines and the frigates. A few designs have a 3rd MAR in line with their faction’s flavor; the FSA destroyer has “Maneuverable,” for example.
• Cost: At 35 points (30 if you are the EotBS), destroyers are about half the cost of a cruiser, and represent a bit of an upgrade from a frigate. Most of this upgrade cost comes in the form of additional range and/or AD from the weapons; in other words, a stronger offensive capability.

So, overall, the 6 destroyers in DW present something of a mixed bag; while roundly similar in their basic statlines, their various weapons give them different roles within each faction. It is also interesting to note that as far as defensive stats like AA and CC, all destroyers fall short of a cruiser’s capability (which has a baseline of 4).

Comparing the game with Real Life

Alright! Now to answer the question posed by they title of this post: How do DW destroyers compare with real life destroyers? First, I think it is safe to say that based on their stats, the DW destroyers are closes to those of WW I and WW II vintage. In DW, the destroyer is a small, expendable ship that simply doesn’t have the capital ship role modern destroyers have.

That being said, I think that, in general, destroyers in DW are much more niche players than destroyers in real life were, with specific missions to perform. As I hinted earlier, the KoB’s design probably comes the closest of all the factions to replicating the role played by real destroyers in the World Wars. However, while in real life destroyers were all similar in their capabilities and armament, destroyers in DW are all quite different. Even among those with similar armament, differences still exist in cost, MARs, firing arcs, and the like.

Interestingly, anti-submarine warfare, which in the real world was almost exclusively the domain of ships the size of destroyers and smaller, is a role that has been denied to destroyers in DW. This is due to the fact that every surface model in DW has a CC rating of some kind, not just the small ships. Furthermore, the CC rating of a ship is directly proportional to its size, meaning that a battleship is a far more effective anti-submarine platform than a destroyer (in a complete reversal of history!).

As far as the name goes, it appears that Spartan has appropriated the generic term “destroyer” in its meaning as a small surface combatant. Whether or not there were ever torpedo boats in the DW timeline for them to destroy is currently not knowable, although the possibility certainly  exists!

Conclusion

So, we have seen how in real life the destroyer type evolved as a counter to torpedo boat swarms and grew into the major warship we know today. We have also seen that the destroyers in DW match most closely with real-world destroyers from the WW I and WW II era, though this is far from an exact match.

Until next time, Good Luck and Good Hunting!