|
Post by boomboomf22 on Dec 12, 2017 12:32:22 GMT -6
Also holy crap, Tzu I, ex-Hatsuse was built with 2000tons extra...AI why.
Also been playing around with rebuilds of it and even in british yards there isn't a whole lot that could be done to make it better. She could be rebuilt as a huge fast raider with 16" guns in british yars, but that is A: expencive, and B: not worth it even if it was a 1/3 the cost.
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Dec 12, 2017 13:30:15 GMT -6
Also holy crap, Tzu I, ex-Hatsuse was built with 2000tons extra...AI why. I kind of suspect that what happened is that the AI tried to make a 3x3 or 4x3, found it to be way over the design displacement, and eliminated main battery turrets until it was no longer over the design displacement. Would've been nice for it to then go and do something with all the spare tonnage, but I suppose the ship design algorithm is only allowed to run through so many iterations before the computer accepts a legal or near-legal design.
|
|
|
Post by boomboomf22 on Dec 12, 2017 15:36:33 GMT -6
Yah, makes sense. Still maybe for RTW2 they will have a final runthru algorithm where it shrinks it down to a certain amount of free tonnage if it has free tonnage
|
|
|
Post by babylon218 on Dec 14, 2017 17:06:19 GMT -6
For the consideration of the Imperial Chinese Navy, Krupp-Allington Werft is proud to present Schlactschiff 1918 (see attachments)! Schlactschiff 1918 is a completely new and experimental design, seeking to take advantage of technical advances. As per requirements, she fits 12 13" guns, and is equipped with 125 rounds per barrel. However, to save weight (and thus cost), she has these guns mounted in three quadruple turrets. Furthermore, all three gun houses are situated forward of amidships, allowing the main armoured belt to be reduced in length. While many theorists have expressed concern regarding firing arcs aft, this should not provide any noticeable handicap under normal battle conditions. Another weight-saving improvement is the removal of armour plating at the ship's ends and extended areas. Instead, the ship's central spaces (magazines and machinery) have been sheltered within an armoured watertight compartment, preserving the vessel's seaworthiness. This has allowed the vessel to be fitted with greater anti-torpedo measures and the machinery needed to make 24kn on a hull of just 32,500 tons! The vessel's armour has been designed to repel shellfire from Japanese 14" guns out from a range of 12,000 yards, with a 14" belt, 3" deck, 16" turret facings, and 4" turret roofs. The ship's 16 5" guns have been placed in twin turrets armoured with 6" plate, sufficient to protect them from anything up to 6" guns at point blank range. The vessel has short range, but given the more littoral nature of Chinese naval policy, this should be more than sufficient. Finally, Schlactschiff 1918 has been equipped with a large quarter deck and hangar which can be used for storing and deploying the ship's boats and catapult fighters. In all, this design will cost just under 3.8Mn marks per month for 30 months, or 113Mn marks in total. With a conventional ABXY triple turret main armament configuration, this cost escalates to just over 4Mn marks per month or 120Mn in total, on a displacement of 35,100 tons. With a less convention ABY quadruple arrangement, costs remain at just under 3.9Mn per month or 117Mn in total on a tonnage of 33,700 tons. As demonstrated, KAW's pioneering design saves at least 4Mn marks and 1,200 tons on more conventional designs of similar quality, and we thoroughly believe this design will make an excellent impression in Chinese service. (Note: We would like to assure the Navy staff that the final designs here in Germany do indeed include exhaust funnels. An overeager clerk sent the deck plan included with this proposal before our designers had finished drawing!) Attachments:
Schlactschiff 1918.40d (4.99 KB)
|
|
|
Post by babylon218 on Dec 14, 2017 17:30:47 GMT -6
Your Excellency,
Pursuant to your enquiry regarding the Battleships Tzu I, Chen Yuen and Tian Dan, I offer the following advice:
Tzu I is not worth maintaining. While her belt armour is acceptable, her deck armour is pathetically weak - particularly over the turrets. Furthermore, while she still has two thirds the firepower of many present-generation battleships of the Reichsflotte, the Japanese 13" is of terrible quality, only able to penetrate 14" of armour at point blank range and totally incapable of any meaningful threat against another capital ship's deck! Her sole redeeming feature is her speed, and even that is only comparable to our vessels. In my view, she isn't worth the cost of the paint on her hull, let alone the price of munitions and fuelling! She'd serve the Dowager Empress better as scrap iron than as a ship of war! Get what money you can and be done with it!
As for the debate over Tian Dan and Chen Yuen, I would be inclined to maintain the former for the time being. While Chen Yuen has superior quality guns, Tian Dan has more of them, and 10" guns will still cause great consternation for any armoured cruiser which may come upon her. Furthermore, her armour is superior to Chen Yuen's, which would not withstand an engagement with even a first generation dreadnought. Tian Dan might. To be clear, I regard both vessels a liability in any battle fleet, but if one must be retained, then Tian Dan is the most useful.
I hope this advice is of use to your Excellency, Minister of the Navy.
Sincerely, Kommandant Hermann Beck Imperial German Naval Attache to the Qing Empire, Kiautschou Bay.
|
|
cnw
New Member
Posts: 45
|
Post by cnw on Dec 16, 2017 0:14:26 GMT -6
Humber Estuary Shipbuilding would like to present its proposal for the 1918 Battleship design competition. Designed with longetivity in mind, this 36 000 tonne design is armed with 16" guns (having better penetration than the 15"s, better upgrade potential and also being lighter for comparable salvo weight - which would require at least ten of the smaller guns) in four twin turrets (to ensure main battery redundancy in case of disabled turrets). Speed is modest 23 knots, with reduced fuel storage which we hope would be an acceptable compromise (we have indications that the Chinese navy wants to keep these ships close to their home waters). Armor protection far surpasses any recent or projected capital ships with 15,5" belt, 4" deck and 16" turret face armor, with a large immunity zone against its own armament. [Okay, 15" guns abandoned despite my initial wishes.. when you can have 8×16", there's no reason to return to 15", and the 16"s will - with possible refit to +1 quality - remain viable until the game ends.. I had to go with short range, otherwise we'd be either stuck with 3.5" deck, or a 38tt-ish design, neither of which appeal to me.
Regarding the battleship situation - with Tzu-I you have two viable courses of action, either scrap her or keep her in mothballs as a tonnage reserve, anything else is a waste of resources. Then again, if you're after tonnage reserve in case of a blockade or invasion support, you can very well keep both older pre-Dreadnoughts in mothballs, they'd do the same job far cheaper]Attachments:HES BB1918-1.40d (4.99 KB)
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Dec 18, 2017 0:31:58 GMT -6
Congratulations to Krupp-Allington Werke, which has been awarded contracts for two battleships - Tung Hai and Yueh Fei - to be built to its Schlactschiff 1918 proposal. While we are ambivalent about the unusual main battery configuration of the Schlactschiff 1918 proposal and were sorely tempted by the heavier guns of the American and British proposals, we ultimately elected to go with this for reasons of economy. We may also lay down a third ship of the class, but funding for that is not currently available. Why, you might ask, is Yueh Fei, not the lead ship Tung Hai, pictured? In an historical footnote of no particular significance, it turns out that this is not the first battleship to be named Yueh Fei which the Imperial Chinese Navy has ordered. The first was a first-class battleship ordered as part of the 1901 program, coincidentally to be built by the very same shipyard, and scrapped under construction in compliance with the Hague Naval Armaments Limitation Treaty of 1901. I'll probably have the next proper update ready before the end of the week. As I expect people will be busy over the next couple weeks between the holidays and the new year, I'm thinking that the next submission deadline won't be until at least January 7, but if you would like the deadline pushed further into the new year please feel free to say so.
|
|
|
Post by boomboomf22 on Dec 18, 2017 21:57:18 GMT -6
If I may ask what it was that cinched it over my design? Was it the size difference and thus associated cost?
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Dec 19, 2017 2:09:04 GMT -6
If I may ask what it was that cinched it over my design? Was it the size difference and thus associated cost? That's pretty much it, and then mostly because I in essence want to replace or rebuild 100% of my existing battle line relatively quickly (not counting Tzu I, which I think I'm going to keep around in mothballs until the first of the new battleships completes in case I need it to supplement my rather dated battle line). Two new battleships only gets me half or two thirds of the way there (depending on how you count modernizing Kwang-Chou-Wan for compatibility with the new ships), and even with babylon's/KAW's proposal my estimates (based though they were on immediate post-war funding levels) indicated that I'd be coming close to an empty treasury by the time I complete the pair.
|
|
|
Post by boomboomf22 on Dec 19, 2017 9:39:13 GMT -6
Fair enough
|
|
|
Post by theexecuter on Dec 19, 2017 11:58:17 GMT -6
I was pretty sure the designs I put out were too expensive...but without AON armor, it was difficult to put out a budget design that produced enough firepower. If possible, aeson, can you share a cost expectation for future capital ship designs? If not, that's ok too. Loving this AAR and enjoying seeing everyone else's designs.
|
|
|
Post by dorn on Dec 19, 2017 12:52:35 GMT -6
I was pretty sure the designs I put out were too expensive...but without AON armor, it was difficult to put out a budget design that produced enough firepower. If possible, aeson, can you share a cost expectation for future capital ship designs? If not, that's ok too. Loving this AAR and enjoying seeing everyone else's designs. I completely agree that budget costs help as this is something we could go wrong way. My offer was costly but I could offer cheap design similar to previous BB/BC competion. But its difficult totShip estimate if cheap or quality variant is preferred one. Ship with 14" belt, 16" turret armor and 3x3x16" guns was quite feasible for 110M. Even for 90M was feasible to build competitive ship.
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Dec 19, 2017 13:47:43 GMT -6
If possible, aeson, can you share a cost expectation for future capital ship designs? If not, that's ok too. I'll try, but I didn't really have a target cost in mind for this most recent design competition. I probably should have had one, considering what I wanted to do, but I didn't. Also, for whatever it's worth, my estimate was that a pair of any of the other proposals submitted would be around 78-89% complete if I took no economizing measures, 83-95% complete if I mothballed the predreadnoughts and Tzu I, or 85-97% complete if I scrapped the predreadnoughts and Tzu I by the time I ran out of funds. If babylon's proposal had been more nearly as expensive as the other proposals or if my goal had been to add to the battle line rather than replace the existing battle line, I don't think that cost would have been as significant a factor in my decision for this competition and I probably still would have laid down a pair of ships to one of the proposals submitted, but babylon's proposal is cheap enough that my estimate was that I could build a pair of them and have some small amount of money left over even without taking economizing measures, and my estimate for the case where I scrapped the predreadnoughts and Tzu I was that I could build a pair of them and have more or less enough money left over to rebuild Kwang-Chou-Wan or buy a fifth of my desired third new battleship. If babylon's submission had been closer in cost to the rest of the field, then your proposal would not have lost due to its cost, which isn't actually all that much less affordable than that of the British submissions (I estimated at the time that I'd be able to get about 80% completion on two battleships built to your, 78% completion on a pair built to dorn's, 86% completion on a pair built to cnw's, or 89% completion on a pair built to boomboomf22's proposals without taking any economizing measures) despite costing 10-20 million more in total - Britain's efficient shipbuilding industry isn't entirely advantageous when it comes to making things fit into the budget, because it reduces construction time but not total cost. Your submission probably would have lost on the grounds of everyone else having better armor, which unfortunately you weren't really going to be able to avoid since Germany, France, and Great Britain all have AoN armor.
|
|
|
Post by babylon218 on Dec 19, 2017 14:07:39 GMT -6
On a related note... Hurray! I finally won another contract!
|
|
|
Post by theexecuter on Dec 19, 2017 15:43:13 GMT -6
Fair enough. If the consideration wasn't major (and it sounds like cost wasn't the primary consideration), then don't include it. If you do have a hard cap though, please let us know. Carry on, good sir!
|
|