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Post by JagdFlanker on May 31, 2017 10:42:12 GMT -6
so i'v reached 1930 in my current game where every ship i'v built has equal Belt and BE armour as well as narrow belt, and i can't say i'v had any noticeable negative effects the entire game
outside of luck (need more than 1 game to confirm) this leads me to believe that if you choose narrow belt, the areas that are no longer protected by Belt are now (mostly?) protected by the BE and the weight of the armour now protected by the BE should be consistent with the BE thickness
regardless if this is 100% true or not, i would still think that if i set my belt to 10" and BE to 10" that B+BE should be =/near the same armour weight regardless if i choose narrow belt or normal belt; however there is currently a HUGE weight savings for choosing narrow belt regardless
will have to play more to be 100% certain, but as is it seems to me well worth it for me to go with narrow belt if BE isn't much less thicker than Belt armour
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Post by theexecuter on May 31, 2017 13:15:11 GMT -6
I thought narrow belt refers to the vertical distance covered by the belt, not the horizontal distance...
Am I wrong?
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Post by konstantinua00 on May 31, 2017 14:08:48 GMT -6
Oh god... Not the narrow vs BE thread again...
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Post by JagdFlanker on May 31, 2017 16:04:44 GMT -6
I thought narrow belt refers to the vertical distance covered by the belt, not the horizontal distance... Am I wrong? that's my assumption, but if that's the case i'd assume that the BE handles the armour thickness of any part that's not the main belt - if you choose narrow belt there isn't a huge bare un-armoured hole in the ship on the area the narrow belt is missing, there would still be armour over the entire side hull of the ship, and whatever areas that arn't included in the belt armour should be covered by BEi figured the extended belt was the entire average belt of the whole side of a ship, while the actual main belt was just the thicker part of the armour in the belt that protected the important innards of the ship so if i make the belt and extended belt the same thickness, then there should be no weight savings for having a narrow belt because the entire side hull of the ship has the same armour thickness anyways, right? |
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Post by boomboomf22 on May 31, 2017 22:13:17 GMT -6
Yah except it has been stated that it also increases the change of a shell hitting no armor at all, which logically suggests that narrow belt also means less area is covered by BE in addition to B
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Post by theexecuter on Jun 1, 2017 0:38:17 GMT -6
In the ship design books I've read, belt armor is defined by its thickness, the length of the ship it covers, and the width (or vertical height) it the belt.
Ships with 'narrow' belt have a smaller height of the hull armored. This becomes problematic when the ship is overloaded...as the belt may be entirely submerged, and offering much less protection.
I think the misunderstanding here is that narrow belt means that the length of the belt is less. I doubt that. It is the width of the belt (how much vertical coverage the belt provides) that is being discussed.
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Post by bcoopactual on Jun 1, 2017 2:33:56 GMT -6
I thought narrow belt refers to the vertical distance covered by the belt, not the horizontal distance... Am I wrong? that's my assumption, but if that's the case i'd assume that the BE handles the armour thickness of any part that's not the main belt - if you choose narrow belt there isn't a huge bare un-armoured hole in the ship on the area the narrow belt is missing, there would still be armour over the entire side hull of the ship, and whatever areas that arn't included in the belt armour should be covered by BEi figured the extended belt was the entire average belt of the whole side of a ship, while the actual main belt was just the thicker part of the armour in the belt that protected the important innards of the ship so if i make the belt and extended belt the same thickness, then there should be no weight savings for having a narrow belt because the entire side hull of the ship has the same armour thickness anyways, right? You should be right realistically because the area between the main belt near the waterline and the deck where the casemates are should be considered BE. Like in the picture of the Royal Sovereign below.  You have the 13 inch main belt and then on either side you have the extended belt that starts at 6 inches and tapers down. There is also the stretch of 6 inches of armor directly above the 13 inch main belt that covers the area until you get to the 6 inches of protection for the casemates (which would be secondary armor in game) The 6 inch armor between the main belt and the secondary armor is BE and I think you are right, realistically if the main belt was narrower (i.e. shorter vertically) then that bit would be wider (taller vertically) to cover the gap. So if the main belt and the extended belt were made to the same thickness then reasonably it would be all the same and weigh the same. Narrow or normal, main belt would be a meaningless description in this case. My guess is what you are actually seeing in-game when you try it is just a quirk of the simplification of the protection scheme for game purposes that was never anticipated by the developers because I'm not aware of any historic examples in that era where the entire side of the ship was protected in that fashion. As such, if the chance of missing the armor is as small as it seems, it might actually be considered an exploit. |
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Post by aeson on Jun 1, 2017 12:57:42 GMT -6
Given how the numbers provided within the game change when you shift from the normal to the narrow belt scheme, I would not be too surprised if the game assumes that the the length of the armor belt is smaller under the narrow belt scheme than under the normal belt scheme. Designing a 14000-ton 17kn locally-built USN legacy battleship, it looks like a uniform 9.5" belt weighs 4179 tons (2621 tons for the main belt, 1558 tons for the extended belt) under the normal belt scheme and 3229 tons (2059 tons for the main belt, 1170 tons for the extended belt) under the narrow belt scheme. Using a 13.5" main belt and a 3.5" extended belt, the numbers are 3723 tons for the main and 575 tons for the extended belts under the normal belt scheme, and 2927 tons for the main and 432 tons for the extended belt under the narrow belt scheme. Assuming that the armor thickness and height is uniform over the length of the ship within each portion of the belt and that there is no tapered transitional section, and adjusting for armor thickness, it looks like the belt is about 37% extended belt and 63% main belt by area under both the normal and the narrow belt schemes. The change in armor weight due to changing the armor schemes suggests that 21.5% less area is protected by the main belt and nearly 25% less area is protected by the extended belt under the narrow belt than under the main belt, which means that roughly 23% of the area formerly protected by some form of belt armor is no longer protected by any belt armor. If we further assume that using the narrow belt scheme redistributes the extended belt so that all areas protected by the main belt under the normal belt scheme are still protected by some kind of belt armor under the narrow belt scheme, then roughly 61% of the area protected by the extended belt under the normal belt scheme must be unarmored under the narrow belt scheme, which would result in a rather extreme reduction in the height of the extended armor belt if the extended belt is not made to cover less of the ship's length under the narrow belt scheme than under the normal belt scheme and the extended belt has a uniform height over its full length.
As for why JagdFlanker is not seeing any significant reduction in performance: if you model the armor belt as a rectangle stretching along the side of the ship and assume firstly that the normal belt scheme stretches the full length of the ship, secondly that the overall height of the belt is unchanged between the narrow and normal armor schemes, and thirdly that the central 63% of the belt length is the main belt regardless of whether you chose Sloped Deck, Flat Deck, or Flat Deck AoN, then a ship with a narrow belt with equally-thick main and extended belt sections is in essence a proto-AoN armor scheme that leaves about 23% of the side of the ship unarmored while the 'true' AoN armor scheme leaves about 37% of the side of the ship unarmored. Presumably, the areas which lack armor protection would be concentrated near the bow and stern of the ship as these areas are relatively unimportant, so I wouldn't expect that a ship protected using a proto-AoN narrow belt armor scheme to be in any particular way more susceptible to damage than a ship protected using a true AoN armor scheme, unless there's a problem with flooding from the unarmored fore and aft areas
Incidentally, playing around in the design screen in a 1950 postgame save suggests that the relative change in belt armor weight between normal and narrow belt remains constant over the entire game. It can also be seen that the weight of each portion of the armor belt is dependent upon the ship's design displacement, the ship's design speed (faster ships have heavier belts, though there are some plateaus), the belt scheme selected, and the thickness of that portion of the belt, but not on the choice between flat deck over belt and sloped deck, the thickness of the deck armor, or anything to do with the ship's armament.
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