Battlecarrier

A battlecarrier is a cross between a battleship and a aircraft carrier. In some cases, the aft section of the ship consists of a carrier deck and the forward an area with heavy gun turrets (as in the example below), though this isn't the only layout possible:

Real world

France, Imperial Japan, Russia and India (by purchase from the latter) are the only nations which have experimented with the concept of a hybridizing battleships or cruisers and aircraft carriers. The Jeanne d'Arc type and Kiev class (remaining member of class to become INS Vikramaditya type) ships combined elements of a conventional cruiser with a capacity to launch and retrieve large numbers of helicopters or V/STOL airplanes. The Ise-class battleships of the IJN were, during WWII, modified into battlecarriers by the removal of their after gun turrets and installation of a flight deck and hanger. However, excluding floatplanes, aircraft carried by an Ise-class ship had to land on a conventional carrier or land installation.

NationStates

Nations use battlecarriers for various reasons, including their decreased vulnerability to attack by other surface ships compared to regular carriers, their ability to remain effective in combat even with their carrier deck disabled and their increased flexibility. The trade off is in capacity: a battlecarrier's extra systems mean a regular carrier of the same tonnage could carry vastly more aircraft, and a battleship of equivalent mass could contain more guns and store more ammunition.

Many Super-Dreadnoughts on NS seem to be at least partly inspired by real life battle carriers, as many of them carry air wings. Sometimes however, they carry more aircraft than dedicated aircraft carriers, which was not the case with RL Battle Carriers.

List of NS battlecarriers

• The Ultra Class BattleCarrier designed by Antarctica123 and built by Phoenix Dynamix
• Community Vessel Cruiser of Sober Thought, hybrid aircraft carrier-cruiser-landing ship