Secondary accuracy

[theexecuter]

I was playing France lately, experimenting with low armor designs...and I noticed an interesting phenomenon.

In every fleet battle I fought, several against Austria and 1 against Italy in the time period between 1900 and 1914, my fleets absolutely slaughtered enemy destroyers...sinking at least nine in each engagement.

I have never sunk so many destroyers consistently before.

I had made a design choice following a Russians playthrough to have no casemate guns of any kind. I decided to take the ROF penalty and have guns operable in all weather.

Could the secondaries be more effective at hitting targeta if they are in turrets rather than in casemates?

[director]

That's an interesting and curious point, and I cannot even guess. I would have thought the ROF penalty would make casemate-mounts a better choice.

I'm running a USA game right now with a house rule that forbids 'classic' dreadnoughts and battle-cruisers: all capital ships must carry a heavy secondary battery.
For example, my 'Lexington'-class BCs have 4x13" and 16x10" armament, and I've just begun completing my version of a dreadnought, with 9x13" and 18x8". Prior, I had semi-dreadnought B's.
The first couple of fleet engagements against the CSA didn't go well as I found it very hard to close the range to bring my full firepower to bear. The last one was a convoy attack with 2 BCs and 4 Semi-dreadnoughts on my team and 1 BC (4x12"), 3 BBs (6x12") and 2 Bs (including one semi-dreadnought) on the Confederate side. That time they closed in while I stayed concentrated and the result was an Atlantic Tsushima: they lost 1 BC, 3 BBs, 1 B and 10 of 11 DDs while I lost 5 DDs (well worth it - and I built my guys 16 new 900-tonners as a 'Thank you').

I was on the verge of giving up the 'semi' idea, but that result makes it Proven Doctrine and so set in stone. And I just got Secondary Directors in 1915, so I'm going to play it out and see if the volume of fire from lighter-weight secondaries can be a winning strategy.