Cruisers ???

Flotilla Leader is nice. Algerie plus Duquesne plus Emile Bertin and three destroyers yield +5 initiative.

It's not realistic in the war to always expect to have air cover and a battleship or three.

Oh, I understand the reasons behind how we got where we are. It's certainly more fun to roll the buckets of dice than several small shots, and carriers and battleships are the key selling points of the game. I'm just saying that if the real admirals played as fast and loose with capital ships as the most conservative WaS player, they'd all be at the bottom of the ocean in a year's time.

 Notice the remarks to Light Defensive Armament on Helldiver
        Personally can't understand where Industry standards make for a perfect game.
 Admittedly some costs, values and SA's seem a bit out of order but aren't these the intangibles that make it a game.
      Not saying some units defiantly need errata;but again if you don't do it isn't it wrong???
 I think we have to admit even with his low cost BB's and such other things we all gravitated to the game and it plays well
      even with all the tinkering.
 For me to enjoy reading about play or doing a build its all about the originals with a sprinkling of expansion; never caring or
     in my case let them dominate a build.

That includes just about everything; except fantasy; unless you believe in a parralle universe

Cruisers are good for their SAs, hull points and guns or torps. But competitively, they often don't make the cut due to the appeal of the BB-DD-sub-fighter builds, which is probably why you asked the question in the first place.

The value and use of cruisers really depends on the size of your fleet, the map and scenario/game description. With all the units now in the game, you are looking at the core surface ships of destroyers, cruisers and battleships ranging in cost from a few points to quite a lot of points. Cruisers fall in the middle there overlapping with the destroyers and battleships. But how useful are they? Or rather, how useful are they at countering an enemy threat? How are you going to counter what the enemy might throw at you, especially the big threats like BB, torp swarms, subs and air? Unfortunately, the cruiser is not the answer to these threats except for the DD swarm or the long lance.