In Russia, magazines are turrets, and turrets are magazines

[achanos]

Game has imitated life. Playing as Russia, won the 1st Russo-Japanese War handily in 1903 with assistance of the US. 1913 2nd Russo-Japanese (and America as my allies again) War kicks off with the usual Japanese sneak attack on Port Arthur, and the Russian navy apparently sleeping off a hangover. Lost a B, a CA and a CL to Japanese torpedo attacks.

Six months later, after rushing new ships to Port Arthur, a major fleet battle commences, as night falls, we close in and in the space of 10 minutes;

B Gangut secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BB Imperator Alexander II, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BC Peytr I, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
B Evstafi, secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
CA Varvag, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!

I have NEVER seen this in a game before. Apparently the Russian Navy stores shells and powder in the turrets. 

Needless to say, that was pretty much it for Russia, 4 of 6 BB/BC sunk, 2 CA sunk, 2 CL sunk. Game over. Wow, just wow...

[aeson]

I don't know that I've ever seen a single engagement with quite that many ships lost to turret flashfire explosions in any of my games, but yeah, that's a pretty good example of one of the two primary reasons why I hate bringing heavy ships into low-visibility actions. Torpedoes, naturally, are the other reason.

I think my most demoralizing loss to turret flashfire explosions would have to be when I lost a heavy American battlecruiser to a turret flashfire caused by a 16" penetrating hit from a French battlecruiser one or maybe two rounds after sighting unidentified ships at maybe 3000 yards. Barely had a chance to order the ship to full speed and turn away from the unidentified ships before it exploded. Probably not nearly as much of a loss overall as yours, but I'd grown attached to that ship and one of its sisters as the pair of them had roughly handled every French squadron they encountered in the Mediterranean in the previous war.

[garrisonchisholm]

Aug 22, 2017 20:34:57 GMT -6 achanos said:

- after rushing new ships to Port Arthur, a major fleet battle commences, as night falls, we close in and in the space of 10 minutes;

B Gangut secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BB Imperator Alexander II, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BC Peytr I, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
B Evstafi, secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
CA Varvag, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!

I have NEVER seen this in a game before. Apparently the Russian Navy stores shells and powder in the turrets. 

Wow indeed.  Ditto here, I've never endured such a blow, and I don't even think I have INFLICTED 5 flash-fires in even my most lopsided wins.  The random numbers were sure falling foul for you.

[achanos]

I can count the number of times I have had flash fires before. Its been really rare, so this was just...

I must have made RNGJesus awfully mad at me...

[JagdFlanker]

Aug 22, 2017 20:34:57 GMT -6 achanos said:

Game has imitated life. Playing as Russia, won the 1st Russo-Japanese War handily in 1903 with assistance of the US. 1913 2nd Russo-Japanese (and America as my allies again) War kicks off with the usual Japanese sneak attack on Port Arthur, and the Russian navy apparently sleeping off a hangover. Lost a B, a CA and a CL to Japanese torpedo attacks.

Six months later, after rushing new ships to Port Arthur, a major fleet battle commences, as night falls, we close in and in the space of 10 minutes;

B Gangut secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BB Imperator Alexander II, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BC Peytr I, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
B Evstafi, secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
CA Varvag, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!

I have NEVER seen this in a game before. Apparently the Russian Navy stores shells and powder in the turrets. 

Needless to say, that was pretty much it for Russia, 4 of 6 BB/BC sunk, 2 CA sunk, 2 CL sunk. Game over. Wow, just wow...

what's your turret armour?  although it's been commented i use too much turret armour, i practically never get flashfires and i do a lot of close in fighting - i start the game with 8/4 turret/top, by 1915 my ships might have 10/5 or 12/6, and after 1920 14/7

[fredsanford]

i start the game with 8/4 turret/top, by 1915 my ships might have 10/5 or 12/6, and after 1920 14/7

People say that's too much?  Not in my opinion.  I'll go thicker on the T at least by late game.  IIR German Konig class had 13" and were completed in 1913-14.

[bcoopactual]

Aug 22, 2017 20:34:57 GMT -6 achanos said:

Game has imitated life. Playing as Russia, won the 1st Russo-Japanese War handily in 1903 with assistance of the US. 1913 2nd Russo-Japanese (and America as my allies again) War kicks off with the usual Japanese sneak attack on Port Arthur, and the Russian navy apparently sleeping off a hangover. Lost a B, a CA and a CL to Japanese torpedo attacks.

Six months later, after rushing new ships to Port Arthur, a major fleet battle commences, as night falls, we close in and in the space of 10 minutes;

B Gangut secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BB Imperator Alexander II, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
BC Peytr I, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
B Evstafi, secondary battery hit, flashfire, ship explodes!
CA Varvag, turret hit, flashfire, ship explodes!

I have NEVER seen this in a game before. Apparently the Russian Navy stores shells and powder in the turrets. 

Needless to say, that was pretty much it for Russia, 4 of 6 BB/BC sunk, 2 CA sunk, 2 CL sunk. Game over. Wow, just wow...

Well that's a bad day.  I notice it's a pretty diverse group of ships.  The two pre-dreadnoughts were done in by secondary armament flash fires.  (semi-dreadnoughts with larger caliber secondaries?)  That's unusual but not extraordinary if they had larger secondaries and perhaps weren't heavily armored in that region.  

[achanos]

This was pretty early on, 1913, and the turret armor on the predreadnoughts was 9.5 on the Gangut, and 10.5 on the Evstafi. The BC was 10.5 as well. The BB was 12. The CA was only 5.5.

As far as the secondaries, the Gangut was armed with 5 inch secondaries behind 6 inches of armor, so the Japanese 12" guns could easily penetrate that. The Evstafi was same caliber, and 8 inches of armor.

Ironically, the biggest guns in the battle were the 13" on my BB. All the rest of my capitals were 12". The Japanese had 12" guns on their new Battlecruisers, but all their pre-dreads were 11". No idea what the quality on them might have been, but I armor the turrets based on what my guns were. Quality 1 on the 12" and 0 on the 13", so from a penetration perspective, I SHOULD have been in pretty good shape.

At least on paper....

[jwsmith26]

In real life it might have been foolish but I never put more than 2" of armor on my secondaries for splinter protection (and those guns are often 10" to 12" in size). I can count on one hand the number of times I have had magazine explosions as the result of hits to my secondaries, and that's in hundreds of battles playing every nation, most of them fought at ranges under 10,000 yds (I do like to mix it up).

Random events are, well, random. The fact that the described battle was so far out of the norm that it deserved its own posting is a pretty good indication that it was a truly aberrant occurrence, one so far out of the norm that you should probably not base your future decisions upon what happened.

Everyone plays the game differently. Personally, I'm aghast at the level of armor applied by achanos (absolutely no offense meant, achanos). I have never sailed a ship with more than 3.5 inches of turret top armor or 14 inches of belt armor. (I can't help but think of all the good stuff I can pile onto the ship if it's not an armadillo.) It is pretty amazing that the two of us successfully and enjoyably play the same game with such divergent strategies.

[achanos]

No offense taken. I like to experiment, I have run with the "Moar Dakka!" design philosophy quite often, like my Battlecruiser campaign for Japan, which was all about speed and firepower. I did lose a lot of ships though. Tried a based-on-history German campaign with very heavily armored ships and smaller guns, which worked well for survival, but not so great for sinking things.

Like you, I have rarely seen explosions like this. My first AH game went to 1950, and I think I saw 4 flash fires in fifty years.

I tinker to see where the trade offs really begin to tell. The biggest issue with the turtle tactic is that you cannot armor everything, and I have had VERY heavily armored ships that still floated, but the superstructure was completely shot away, rendering the ship ineffective.

One of my best designs was a BC with VERY heavy deck armor. The belt was quite thin for the time, and was really only good for stopping 8" to 9" shells. What she did have was a 12x14" Quality 2 guns. I did my absolute best to keep her at quite the distance and rain shells in on better armored opponents. I would only close in on cruisers. She had the speed to run away from everything except destroyers, but had massed secondaries for them. Ship worked remarkably well, when I could keep the range. I only lost two of the class, one to destroyer torps in a surprise night engagement, and one to an uncontrolled fire.

I think that the game does a good job showing the swings in tech and the counters, except for torpedoes, which perform pretty much realistically early on, and get a bit over the top late game. I even did a French Jeune Ecole campaign built around that, got spanked hard early on, but mid game and late game were quite entertaining!

[keris]

I've had 3 BCs go up in one battle. Went to look at the design and turned out I had accidentally set it to only 5 inches of T armor. That didn't work well.

[director]

Goodness gracious! You got a quality 2 gun? I've never ever seen that.

[jwsmith26]

Aug 23, 2017 16:03:46 GMT -6 director said:

Goodness gracious! You got a quality 2 gun? I've never ever seen that.

Almost exactly my feelings, except that I recall getting a quality 2 guns about a year and a half ago. There has been some discussion on the forum that seemed to indicate the devs had said they don't exist and it happened many games ago so I thought I was probably mistaken. As a result, I didn't mention it at the time, but now I think, maybe I didn't imagine it. 

[bcoopactual]

Fredrik is on record stating:

"The quality differences in the game will not go outside -1 to +1. except for the initial -2 guns that represent older designs.

Gun quality has a slight indirect effect of accuracy, in that the range as a proportion of maximum range is a factor in determining base accuracy. However, there are a host of other research based factors in RTW that affect both ROF, accuracy, penetration, range and damage, so gun quality is only one among many factors."

[achanos]

Sorry, I should have said +1, not quality 2, I meant 2nd tier.