Above Water Torpedo Mounts on ships other than DD and CLs?

[admiral]

I've come back to this game after a long hiatus and remember the ability to put those above-water triple and quintuple swivel torpedo mounts on things like heavy cruisers and even battleships. I even remember there was a niche group of people who actually used torpedoes as a primary weapon on their ships instead of guns. In my latest playthough I have quintuple mounts researched but can't mount any on ships other than DDs. Was there an update that phased them out? Is there some key pre-requisite technology I'm missing? Am I just forgetting some feature of the ship designer? Every time I design something other than DDs the only mounts available are single-tube submerged ones.

[bcoopactual]

Welcome back. No change that I'm aware of. There is a specific tech that needs to be researched to put swivel mounts on ships larger than CL that is separate from the CL swivel mount tech. It's the last or next to last tech in that research area [Edit - last tech in the Light Forces and Torpedo Warfare area with a date of 1920.] so you don't see it until late game. I also believe the swivel launchers use the same mount locations as the main guns and large ships can only use the wing mounts for torpedo launchers not the centerline ones. So if you have some throwback wing mounted gun design it might screw with seeing the available torpedo launchers as well.

[admiral]

Feb 2, 2019 1:12:51 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

Welcome back. No change that I'm aware of. There is a specific tech that needs to be researched to put swivel mounts on ships larger than CL that is separate from the CL swivel mount tech. It's the last or next to last tech in that research area [Edit - last tech in the Light Forces and Torpedo Warfare area with a date of 1920.] so you don't see it until late game. I also believe the swivel launchers use the same mount locations as the main guns and large ships can only use the wing mounts for torpedo launchers not the centerline ones. So if you have some throwback wing mounted gun design it might screw with seeing the available torpedo launchers as well.

Thanks. I love the ability to do crazy designs (I once designed a CA with 20 main guns and almost no turret armor) and torpedo battleships are pretty funny to me. If anything, it's actually an interesting and valid alternate history. I'm struggling to remember the name but I do remember a naval theorist who noticed the increasing range of torpedoes was catching up to those of guns (this was before improvements in accuracy) and said something to the effect of "A gun can't do anything a torpedo can at an effective range.". I know it was a quote in a Wikipedia article but not much else. 

In any case, I just love the idea of torpedoes vs guns, considering torpedoes enable any ship to sink any other, at least in theory. One interesting tidbit you may not have noticed is that throughout the game, a single destroyer carries enough torpedoes to destroy at least 1 battleship (i.e. assuming no other damage, pre-dreadnaughts fall to 1-2 torpedoes, late game dreadnaughts sink after 3-4, but DD torp capacity keeps up). Torpedoes also have a very interesting place at the beginning of the game. For those first few years, it's extremely rare for pre-dreadnaughts to be sunk by gunfire. The combination of terrible accuracy, horrific armor-piercing capability, and inefficient mixed armament with only 4 main guns on a ship means the only real casualties in the early game come from torpedoes. 

Also, I find it amusing that torpedoes actually have longer ranges than guns in the modern age, though they're really more like underwater guided missiles than what we use.