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Post by ranger9000 on Nov 1, 2017 1:53:37 GMT -6
Similar to the stickied Best Ship Designs, this is just a random thread I thought to post to see what people's strangest ship designs were. They have to be things you've built that actually ended up seeing some service successfully or not. I figure most of the things that get posted here, if anyone other then myself does, are likely going to be the results of treaty insanity but you never know. I'll start off with three designs. One I posted before in Best ships but fits here to. Name: Dante Alighieri Class Ships in Series: 4 Reason for Design: 15000 Ton and 10 inch Treaty Limitation in 1917 Short Summary of Service Life: The Dantes were a rather odd breed. A concept I'd later revisit much more successfully a number of IRL years later. Due to the treaty limitations they were the biggest thing I could build, and the concept was to try to stuff as many of the largest guns I could into a ship at max tonnage. They did quite well against the Austrians, but the weak turret and battery armour proved to be their downfall when I went to war with the French, where 3 out of 4 of them were sunk in the same engagement. Name: Nisshin Class Ships in Series: 5 Reason for Design: Extremely long lasting 13,000 ton and 8 inch gun treaty in 1908 Short Summary of Service Life: Excessively effective, the ships in this series claimed a number of battlecruisers and a battleship in major naval engagements. As raiders and in cruiser actions they proved quite capable of torching or blowing apart anything they ran into and once they got a later game machinery upgrade they could pull over 30 knots and could outrun most anything they couldn't fight. Name: Aso Class Ships in Series: 2 Reason for Design: I was puttering around when I came across the Dante class from above, and decided to try to build an 'all small gun battlecruiser.' It was originally designed for raiding. Rather hilariously due to the small guns it counted as an CA. Short Summary of Service Life: Hilarity about sums up these two ships. Due to being classified as CAs, they managed to get into cruisers actions more then once where given the immense amount of guns and their tonnage, they promptly dominated the battle. As raiders they worked quite solidly as well, especially when intercepted by other CAs or very unlucky CLs. Due to my ammunition doctrine for these ships, I was trying out an 'firestarter' doctrine that loaded heavy on HE. Flash fires caused by the Aso's rampant fire causing sunk the USS Alabama which was sitting at 38,000 tons and a proper BB with more armour and bigger guns then the Aso. The design served well till the end of the game, and later machinery refits allowed me to push its speed up to the 33-35kn range which made the things faster then some DDs. The success of this class has me planning to try a game with ships like this as my primary doctrine. So how bout the rest of you? What weird designs have you managed to make and use?
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Post by eserchie on Nov 1, 2017 2:44:18 GMT -6
I don't have a screenshot, and deleted the save, But I once had a Dreadnaught with 2-3-4-4-4-3-2 gun layout, none superfiring. (A-C-L-Q-R-W-Y) Late game as france, because I could. I think it was also stupidly slow and armoured to the gills, and the guns were 11" or 12". I was inspired by seeing one of the AI nations fail to get superfiring turrets, so just pile on as many centerline triples as they could, so made a version with quads. Then I thought, "what if I slim the end turrets, so the hull ends can be narrow, like the Pensacola's?" It saw combat, but was rather irrelevant to the outcome, as it was in a major fleet action with all my other ships, against Japan, who were outnumbered three to one.
I have also tried a few badnaught style runs, with silly and arbitrary design restrictions on all my ships. Notable examples-
- Every italian ship must have at least twice as many guns that can fire dead ahead as can fire backwards, and a bow torpedo-tube if possible, to inspire courage and bravery in the commanders. (Protip- Don't do this. It end's in fire and sunken italian ships, and Austro-hungary taking sicily) - No British ship shall have more than three turrets in it's main armament (lost to US in 1911, more due to bad tactics than the actual inferior qaulity of ship, as it was still mostly pre-dreads, though it did hurt the light cruisers badly)
- CSA ships come in two kinds, Cavalry and Infantry. Cavalry ships are allowed to exceed 20 kts, but may not have heavy secondaries or any casemates. They also had restrictions on main armament that varied with type, and had to have long range. Infantry ships were required to mount as much broadside throw as feasible, had to have secondaries within 5" of main calibre, and had to have short range. ALL ships had to be made in Inf and Cav versions. Some Cav designs worked well, others badly due to design flaws outside the restrictions. Infantry ships were handicapped more by the short range rule than anything else. I actually learnt a lot from this run, especially from the cavalry minesweepers and infantry light cruisers.
- All ships must either have less than 2" BE or DE armor, even before AoN, or BE=B, DE=D and hvy secondary armour. I learnt a lot about how much armor should go on different places for different ship classes. Notably, the cruisers that went for the heavy/even armour scheme vastly outperformed the ones that took the minimal armour at the same total tonnage.
-No A, X, or Y turrets. Wish I took sreenshots of some of these. hurt surprisingly little.
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Post by boomboomf22 on Nov 1, 2017 3:44:44 GMT -6
I may borrow the Inf/Cav idea from above.
For weird designs from me I had a BC version of the Agincourt in a recent brit game (it was in the bestship design thread I think, but was lost to the photobucket CF), as well as I have built dreadnoughts with 10" secondary's (due to only 3 centerline) as well as a DN the was 1/1-2-2-2-1/1 in that 1/1=bow gun turrets side by side. It was in a German game where I had hit 1912 with only 3 centerline, no triple turrets... it had 14" guns.
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Post by aeson on Nov 1, 2017 12:15:21 GMT -6
I'm no longer quite certain what the difference between these was or why I built them as distinct classes (probably a fire control and minor weight savings development in between keels being laid): But at any rate they're two different classes of treaty battlecruiser (18000t 12" treaty limit) which entered service in 1918 ( Same) and 1919 ( Nightbunny Littlenail). The second was laid down about six months after the first (unfortunately for my sense of humor, Same was designed and laid down before Nightbunny Littlenail), and then five or six months after that a war with France broke out. Because I was being stubborn, I decided to keep both of them despite the relatively little work that had been done on Nightbunny and the lifting of the treaty restrictions preventing me from building better ships. This is the design that the treaty battlecruisers replaced and were succeeded by; the original first-of-class was cancelled by the treaty while about a year from completion, but when the treaty was terminated by the outbreak of the war with France only a year later I decided to resurrect it and built a second first-of-class; two more would follow it down the slipways. This shows up here because I had to pay the design fee - all 7ish million of it - twice. Once for the lead ship of the class which was cancelled by the treaty, and again for the second lead ship of the class laid down after the treaty was voided by the outbreak of war. My modern battle line was derived from the 42500t battlecruisers but lost a bit of speed and gained guns. They show up here because the first class (the Wuznis) failed to reach its design speed while the second class (the Khaepras), essentially a repeat laid down before the first of the Wuznis completed, exceeded design speed. The Wuznis have been unlucky in other ways, too - in their first battle, two of the three, including the lead ship, were sunk in action against the French battle line, though enough French capital ships went down that it ended up a victory for me.
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Post by marcorossolini on Nov 1, 2017 22:01:00 GMT -6
Ranger, that 33 gun cruiser is truly glorious. 10/10 for thinking outside the box. Very jealous that I didn't think of that!
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Post by konstantinua00 on Nov 3, 2017 17:29:15 GMT -6
I've tried 16-gun CL... Explosions, explosions everywhere
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Post by vivman on Nov 7, 2017 13:29:57 GMT -6
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Post by aeson on Nov 7, 2017 21:58:21 GMT -6
vivman , I've occasionally toyed with the idea of rebuilding CLs to replace the 6" guns with 8" guns but I've never actually gone ahead and done it. How did the Kuma-class cruisers work out for you? Edit: Not one of my own, but this overgrown 1899 DD that claims to be a 1916 CL just intercepted one of my antiquated surface raiders:
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Post by Airy W on Nov 7, 2017 22:34:18 GMT -6
vivman , I've occasionally toyed with the idea of rebuilding CLs to replace the 6" guns with 8" guns but I've never actually gone ahead and done it. How did the Kuma-class cruisers work out for you? Edit: Not one of my own, but this overgrown 1899 DD that claims to be a 1916 CL just intercepted one of my antiquated surface raiders: That's different. (/minnesota) I did have one game where above water torpedo mounts came very early while fire control lagged. So I took all my 1899 CLs with 10x6 inch guns and turned them into torpedo cruisers. That save is long gone so I dont have any pictures, unfortunately. Didn't work too well, IIRC.
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Post by vivman on Nov 10, 2017 10:15:30 GMT -6
vivman , I've occasionally toyed with the idea of rebuilding CLs to replace the 6" guns with 8" guns but I've never actually gone ahead and done it. How did the Kuma-class cruisers work out for you? Edit: Not one of my own, but this overgrown 1899 DD that claims to be a 1916 CL just intercepted one of my antiquated surface raiders: The Kumas were brutal! Could easily handle any other ship in its' class and, occasionally take on Armored/Protected cruisers if it could close quickly enough.
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Post by bcoopactual on Nov 11, 2017 9:07:09 GMT -6
Not one of mine and I can't even post a picture yet because they just laid it down this turn but WTH?!? No idea if that is unusual for other players but I'm pretty certain that's the largest armored cruiser I've ever seen built in any of my games. My largest ACR's in this game are 11,800 tons so Japan didn't build it in response to them. France had the previous two largest classes of ACR's at 14,000 and 13,600 tons so 15,600 tons is quite the statement. I wonder if it's a response to my little 14,000 ton pre-dreadnought " battlecruisers" that I laid down? I haven't commissioned any of them yet but I'm assuming that the AI's have a chance to steal copies of ship designs like we do so they wouldn't necessarily have to wait until I commissioned one of the Memphis'. Nation data says Japan has access to 11 inch guns and medium wing turrets (2 levels of Ship Design) so if it is a response to my "BC's" I'm not sure why they wouldn't build one of their own. I kinda want to ramp up my Intel against Japan to increase the chance of stealing that ship's plans but I'm already fighting two nations with a third thinking about it so no need to go looking for additional trouble. Here is the current game situation in May 1904. [Edit - I finally got to the point in-game where Japan started commissioning these bad boys so I could see what they look like. Holy Haggis, that is not a ship I'd want to meet on a dark and stormy night. At close range if the opponent didn't get a lucky magazine hit (and I don't know what the armor is on the secondary turrets) it looks like it would just shred someone.]
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Post by theexecuter on Nov 11, 2017 9:30:54 GMT -6
I started with 15k CAs in my current Russia game.
I've thought about designing 40k ton CAs in other games...
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Post by bcoopactual on Nov 11, 2017 9:45:44 GMT -6
I started with 15k CAs in my current Russia game. I've thought about designing 40k ton CAs in other games... Dayum. What are you going to do with a 40k ton CA? For my game I've seen plenty of big ACR's posted by players and it would be no surprise to see the AI react in kind but I usually only build one post-legacy class of armored cruisers and they are never more than a couple of hundred tons over 14k max so this Japanese one just took me by surprise.
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Post by garrisonchisholm on Nov 11, 2017 10:30:59 GMT -6
Do you have the End-game ships designs mod installed Bcoop? That might adjust the algorithms somewhat. I noticed some interesting diversification in designs even from early on after I added that one.
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Post by theexecuter on Nov 11, 2017 11:06:45 GMT -6
I started with 15k CAs in my current Russia game. I've thought about designing 40k ton CAs in other games... Dayum. What are you going to do with a 40k ton CA? For my game I've seen plenty of big ACR's posted by players and it would be no surprise to see the AI react in kind but I usually only build one post-legacy class of armored cruisers and they are never more than a couple of hundred tons over 14k max so this Japanese one just took me by surprise. Mostly the super cruiser concept. Lots of high quality smaller guns, speed, good armor. Its inferior to an equivalent BC though, so they arent the best design.
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