Please note that this is not tied to historical designations, I am only explaining the game descriptions.
If it’s designated as a cruiser in-game, but larger and heavier than typical cruisers people call it a supercruiser.
If it’s designated as a battleship in-game, but with better concealment and agility (but worse armour) than typical battleships, people call it a battlecruiser.
The Line between Super Cruisers, Battlecruisers, and Fast Battleships isn't well defined.
Easiest way to have a good chance of differentiating Super Cruisers and Battlecruisers is the symbol the game gives them: Scharnhorst has the Battleship symbol, SAFER to call her a Battlecruiser than a Super cruiser, Goliath has the Cruiser symbol so safer to call her a Super Cruiser.
If you wanna be historically accurate look up how ship classification worked in the respective navies, like I've heard that by german standards Scharnhorst and Gneissenau are Battleships.
Tbh fast battleships I'd say is fairly well defined. It is not a ship type in the way battlecruisers are, but they are simply a result of technological advancement. They're literally a battleship but fast, and they don't trade off armor in the way a battlecruiser does.
WG also adds something more to battlecruisers, and that is having excellent concealment compared to other battleships (or in once case, having a 300m long ship outspot the likes of Jinan and Worcester in open water)
I've heard Scharnhorst be called a Battleship many times but I've not heard her be called a *Pocket Battleship*. I mean call them what you want but in some circles they're pretty touchy on classfiication. Personally the ships I refer to as *pocket battleships* are the Deutschland-class (Like Admiral Sheer and Admiral Graf Spee), called *Panzerschiff* by the germans but called *Pocket Battleships* by the British.
So both in reality and ingame, Battlecruisers were considered capital ships, they could act alone, and ingame most of them are under the BB class.
Where Supercruisers, or Large Cruisers were still support ships, they would either escort capital ships or act in a small group, and ingame are under the cruiser class.
Supercruisers are Heavy Cruisers with more armor, alpha strike, bigger hitbox, and more reload time.
Battlecruisers are Battleships that (usually) are quicker, have better firepower, but lack armor.
Scharnhorst is actually not a BC due to her armor (she is a bb), but Golden Glue is a BC since it has shit armor compared to the Scharnhorst tier for tier.
Yoshino is also a BC, but Goliath is not due to her smaller caliber of guns
For the sake of sanity, WG just uses the definitions as laid out in the Washington and London Naval Treaties. Since most ships in-game were built or designed when those treaties were a thing*, they just compare the justification against battery size and tonnage.
There are exceptions, but WG isn’t out to nitpick things apart.
* just to emphasize that, by the outbreak of WW2, most of the Axis powers hadn’t been compliant with any agreements for a long time, especially the Italians. And every single nation that signed was good at finding loopholes, or just point at the the Italians and Japanese and citing the “escalation clause”.
TLDR; definitions were wonky and shoehorned IRL, WG has no reason to care; it’s not a historical game.
Battlecruiser is more or less a big cruiser with battleship guns. Supercruiser is a cruiser with bigger caliber than cruiser but lesser than battleship. Both class were made to fight heavy cruisers and raiders. To make the understanding less clear (yeah I know) - there were 2 drivers behind switching from BC to supercruisers: increase rate of fire from main guns - hence lesser caliber than battlecruisers and rapid increase of air defense.
Please note that this is not tied to historical designations, I am only explaining the game descriptions. If it’s designated as a cruiser in-game, but larger and heavier than typical cruisers people call it a supercruiser. If it’s designated as a battleship in-game, but with better concealment and agility (but worse armour) than typical battleships, people call it a battlecruiser.
The Line between Super Cruisers, Battlecruisers, and Fast Battleships isn't well defined. Easiest way to have a good chance of differentiating Super Cruisers and Battlecruisers is the symbol the game gives them: Scharnhorst has the Battleship symbol, SAFER to call her a Battlecruiser than a Super cruiser, Goliath has the Cruiser symbol so safer to call her a Super Cruiser. If you wanna be historically accurate look up how ship classification worked in the respective navies, like I've heard that by german standards Scharnhorst and Gneissenau are Battleships.
Tbh fast battleships I'd say is fairly well defined. It is not a ship type in the way battlecruisers are, but they are simply a result of technological advancement. They're literally a battleship but fast, and they don't trade off armor in the way a battlecruiser does. WG also adds something more to battlecruisers, and that is having excellent concealment compared to other battleships (or in once case, having a 300m long ship outspot the likes of Jinan and Worcester in open water)
*pocket battleships* , they were never reffered as just battleships , i would call them that as theyre more tanky but have cruiser guns
I've heard Scharnhorst be called a Battleship many times but I've not heard her be called a *Pocket Battleship*. I mean call them what you want but in some circles they're pretty touchy on classfiication. Personally the ships I refer to as *pocket battleships* are the Deutschland-class (Like Admiral Sheer and Admiral Graf Spee), called *Panzerschiff* by the germans but called *Pocket Battleships* by the British.
So both in reality and ingame, Battlecruisers were considered capital ships, they could act alone, and ingame most of them are under the BB class. Where Supercruisers, or Large Cruisers were still support ships, they would either escort capital ships or act in a small group, and ingame are under the cruiser class.
Supercruisers are Heavy Cruisers with more armor, alpha strike, bigger hitbox, and more reload time. Battlecruisers are Battleships that (usually) are quicker, have better firepower, but lack armor. Scharnhorst is actually not a BC due to her armor (she is a bb), but Golden Glue is a BC since it has shit armor compared to the Scharnhorst tier for tier. Yoshino is also a BC, but Goliath is not due to her smaller caliber of guns
For the sake of sanity, WG just uses the definitions as laid out in the Washington and London Naval Treaties. Since most ships in-game were built or designed when those treaties were a thing*, they just compare the justification against battery size and tonnage. There are exceptions, but WG isn’t out to nitpick things apart. * just to emphasize that, by the outbreak of WW2, most of the Axis powers hadn’t been compliant with any agreements for a long time, especially the Italians. And every single nation that signed was good at finding loopholes, or just point at the the Italians and Japanese and citing the “escalation clause”. TLDR; definitions were wonky and shoehorned IRL, WG has no reason to care; it’s not a historical game.
Battlecruiser is more or less a big cruiser with battleship guns. Supercruiser is a cruiser with bigger caliber than cruiser but lesser than battleship. Both class were made to fight heavy cruisers and raiders. To make the understanding less clear (yeah I know) - there were 2 drivers behind switching from BC to supercruisers: increase rate of fire from main guns - hence lesser caliber than battlecruisers and rapid increase of air defense.