M-Class light cruiser - München *Done*

Well, we have this divide with almost every "what-if" unit. Especially if the unit is inherently a weak unit that will not stand up to play without some help. To me the problem is the card serves no purpose at all if it isn't at least competitive for play in a decent niche scenario. The card doesn't help card collectors or people that want a specifically named ship card for historical reasons. It won't help players that play nation pure and it won't help players that play mostly competitively. So we end up with a waste of cardboard and a poorly used slot if we don't make it useful for something in the game.

From what I have read, the Kriegsmarine really lost its experienced shipbuilding knowledge after WWI except for the U-boat designers. They set up a shadow company in another country (can't remember which one) to design submarines for other navies to maintain their expertise, but did not do the same with surface warships. Their surface ship designs were notoriously under-gunned for their displacement, and their decision to adopt very high-pressure turbines before they had the technology to make them reliable caused them a lot of problems.

So what do we do with a light cruiser that is actually a reversion in power compared to its immediate predecessors? The reversion was the result of the failures of those earlier designs and their attempt to fix the problems. Unfortunately, quality doesn't really translate into WaS stats. Smaller and fewer guns to improve stability and endurace just translates to a weaker stat ship. Plus we don't know if the resulting design would have been a significant improvement anyway.

In these cases we generally extrapolate from the overall warfighting doctrine of the particular navy and its probable deployment if actually built. For the Kriegsmarine it is particularly different because they never really had a large-fleet engagement philosophy. They were focused on disrupting Allied supply lines, not on gaining overall sea control. That doesn't play well in this game with the result that the Kriegsmarine is definitely the navy in the game that is furthest from reality. Even from Rich Baker's time.

A merchant supply raider just doesn't do much for this game. However, giving it a gunnery boost is a "semi-realistic" addition given the improved quality (but not quantity) of gunnery and helps it in a WaS game environment IMO. So I still like Escort Killer as an SA that has some relation to shipping supply line attack and also helps in a practical way for the game. Basically, it is going to be a crossover unit between a large destroyer and a small cruiser. Those are always hard to make and cost.