Over-tonnage.

[garrisonchisholm]

I always try to squeeze everything I can out of my ships, especially early, and so am always pushing to get the full 103% on a hull.  Given I am successful the vast majority of the time, I can see little evidence against this tactic.  However, RTW is a game that supports many paths to success, so with my speed of play it is possible I could never notice a detail which might point to a fly in the over-tonnage ointment.

I know the early Russian dreadnoughts were so over weight that their armored belts rode lower than designed, but has anyone noticed or discovered a genuine RTW game 'negative' that results from maxing out a hull's tonnage?

[scp993]

I think that if a ship is overweight it takes less flooding damage to sink it. It's also more likely to not make it's designed speed I believe.

[konstantinua00]

out of my experience: designed an endgame DD with -35
got -1 speed event
directly copied the design
got -1 speed event
directly copied the design
got designed speed

Now I have 100+ DDs, 24 of them are 34 kts, while others are 35

[director]

I always leave 100-150 tons open for gunnery systems improvements (or for additional torpedo tubes, mines, etc).

[rimbecano]

Director:

My tendency is to design ships to carry lots of ammo, then to reduce shell count to make room for refits. Even the refitted shell counts are higher than what the AI tends to design, because I prioritize engagement at range, so extra ammo is needed to ensure I have enough to do damage with reduced accuracy.

[konstantinua00]

Director:
we are talking about going below zero, not staying way above it

[Roumba]

I'm often pretty fast and loose with how many B/BBs I make with low freeboard (~100% until about the third generation), but I never even considered intentionally overloading them. I simply must try this next game.

[garrisonchisholm]

Well on a 15,000 ton ship, an extra 449 tons (the max) can be meaningful. I suspect that realistically there would be perhaps maneuvering, seaworthiness, or acceleration/range issues, but I have not perhaps looked closely enough to note such. I usually juggle ammo & conning tower armor to trim it as close as possible. It is easy enough to plan for it to be slower than normal, and I classically do.

If anyone notes any drawbacks, I would be interested to see them! :]

[bcoopactual]

Apr 28, 2017 8:23:23 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

I always try to squeeze everything I can out of my ships, especially early, and so am always pushing to get the full 103% on a hull.  Given I am successful the vast majority of the time, I can see little evidence against this tactic.  However, RTW is a game that supports many paths to success, so with my speed of play it is possible I could never notice a detail which might point to a fly in the over-tonnage ointment.

I know the early Russian dreadnoughts were so over weight that their armored belts rode lower than designed, but has anyone noticed or discovered a genuine RTW game 'negative' that results from maxing out a hull's tonnage?

Designing the ship to be overweight causes a flotation modifier to be applied.


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I assume that this takes away from the ships float hit points.

In my last battle, my 18,400 ton battleship had 15,467 float points to start the scenario.  My first Colorado was just completed in my current game so it's still working up so I don't know what her hit points would be.  I am assuming that whatever the float points would normally be for a 22,400 ton battleship the above ship Iowa will have 220 points less.  

I've had enough ships limp back into port with 90+ percent flooding that I don't think it's ever worth it to build a ship overweight but that is just my take on it. 

[bcoopactual]

Sorry for the double post but I went and made an overweight version of my current 900 ton Paulding class DD since DD's have more severe tonnage limits and DD's are when I'm usually tempted to go overweight.

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My 900 ton Paulding class has 1098 float points to start a scenario.  If I'm right, I do want to stress that it is an if, and the float modifier removes hit points or float points in this case, then that's a pretty big percentage hit to my float points for a destroyer.

If I take the overweight amount down to 5 tons for the above design the float modifier drops to 10 as you can see below.


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So for anyone who does want to push the envelope, it does not seem to be a linear penalty, the more overweight you go the worse the penalty seems to get at an ever increasing rate.  So it might not be too bad if you keep it close to the limit.  Still not something I do from a philosophical standpoint but I thought I would share what I found for others who play differently.  

[garrisonchisholm]

Wow- YES, this is exactly the data I was hoping someone could provide!! Thank you bcoopactual! Wow, ok, knowing this fact, I will very probably amend at least some of my build techniques. Really glad you had the wherewithal to be able to generate this.

In fact this may affect my PLC AAR, rather swiftly... *muses*

[director]

konstantinua00 - And should you feel the need to correct or guide people in the future there is a forum feature called the Private Message you can use.

bcoopactual - thanks for that. As I said, I have a strict policy not to go over the tonnage limit, but now I know the maluses are scaled it looks less severe.

[bcoopactual]

You're both welcome. Just keep in mind I don't claim to have anything like a expert grasp of the game's mechanics and that the my presumed effect of the float modifier is a reasonable guess but it's still a guess.  And there could be other possible effects as well like what was mentioned above about having a greater chance of not meeting the design speed.

[axe99]

Nice work BCoop, that's useful data and no mistake .

[bcoopactual]

Thanks axe99 .

I found this on a previous thread about overweight designs.  One of the NWS team made this comment so it seems like the risk of increased chance to not make design speed is confirmed.

Jan 7, 2016 21:08:16 GMT -6 randomizer said:

If I recall correctly, building overweight designs increases the probability that the ships will not reach design speed (because they're over design displacement for their engines) and may be more susceptible to being lost through flotation damage as their exceeded design displacement affects stability. So you need to weigh the cost/benefits of producing overweight designs.