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Post by generalvikus on Mar 5, 2019 10:56:20 GMT -6
I would scrap all protected cruisers mentioned earlier and all armored cruisers.
Why do you want your older cruiser using argument that it is cheaper. Compare both options.
1. using old cruisers on foreign stations - you paid lower maintanence on modern cruisers (minimal) but you paid for all of your old cruisers 2. scrapping all older cruisers - you paid a little more for modern cruisers but you will not pay anything for old cruisers
You shoud ask yourself what should do your armored cruisers in next war? Your possible answer is fight in colonies. However I will ask you what would do your modern ships? I can tell, nothing as all other nations has no chance to your fleet. You should evaluate not fleet you have today but fleet you have in 3 to 5 years. You will be ahead of any nation except UK so your old ships would be easy target and only liability using your resources through all the years and getting you risk that enemy will sink them.
Related to battleships I would be not so worried as aeson as British capital ships lack armor a lot. But they have advantage in numbers so it needs to remedy. The solution is easy, you and UK have similar budget the war would be probably not real earlier than 5 years. It means you will probaby build all your current construction and another 6-10 capital ships. UK would be not able to build similar numbers if they have so much older ships and if you scrap your older ships drastically.
If you in your next war you have 6-10 modern capital ships it means that actual ships will be not in most prominent position so I would not worry so much about their weaknesses.
So main point is to maximalize your current budget to allow maximum construction program and this is only possible by scrapping your old ships.
UK 15"(-1) guns penetration: 12000 - 13.3/1.7 15000 - 12.2/2.5 20000 - 10.3/3.4 max. range - 20240
I would build ship with belt armor at least 14" with sloped deck and 3-3.5" deck armor, turret armor 16", 5" top. I try to design battlecruiser with 27 knots, 7x13" (A,B,Y), 14" belt, 2" BE, 3.5" deck, 16" CT, 16" turret, 5" turret top, 12x5" casemates with 2" armor, TDS level 2 - 33.400 tons, 122M. If you decrease speed to 21 knots, you can increase armor to 16" belt, 4" deck, 17" turret armor which is excellent protection.
This ship is only 10 % more expensive than your previous design however her protection is much better especially for ranges 12.000-20.000 yards. For such armored ship you will completely outclass British ships by large margin and probably anything in construction.
Summary:
Your fleet is so large that you do not need so much ships against any opponent except UK ==> maximum old ships should be scrapped even ones that is relatively new but absolute Your fleet cannot face UK, so you need larger modern ship than UK - you need maximum free budget for construction == > another point to scrap as much ships as possible - drastically
First of all - your plan is based on the assumption that I won't end up at war with the UK for another 5 years. Why can we assume that to be the case? As for your design - I can't easily fit a design to your specifications on a 32,400 ton BC hull. With normal engines and 120 rounds of ammo, it will displace 36,700 tons and cost 132,848. With speed focused engines and 120 rounds of ammo, it will displace 35,300 and cost 129,186. I can only get it to displace 33,400 tons if I give it speed focused engines and 60 rounds of ammo: Did you increase the turret and CT armour to be so much greater than the belt because a shell penetrating the belt must also penetrate the sloped deck, or for some reason? As I've said, I'd like to know how to factor in sloped deck armour when making calculations about the amount of belt armour required. Also, why is the turret top so much more heavily armoured to the deck? I always assumed that a turret flash fire is no more likely to destroy the ship than a hit to the magazines if we exclude the British design flaws, and armoured my ships accordingly. As for the 2 inch BE armour - is it not a problem that this armour can be penetrated by 6 inch guns at their maximum range? If not, could you explain why this is?
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Post by dorn on Mar 5, 2019 11:29:36 GMT -6
generalvikusYou and UK are allies so to be ať war with UK you need first and alliance than your tension need to rise. It is very very unlikely that tension will not raise with another country earlier. Relating the design it was just example. I have not used deck extended armor at all. I have focus design for long range fire as to be in line with your previous design strategy and your fire control will improve till ship will fight first battle. However secondary battery could not do serious damage to your ship as you will be either outside the range or at edge of range, so 6" guns hit nothing important and protection against main guns are not efficient.
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Post by generalvikus on Mar 5, 2019 11:41:05 GMT -6
generalvikus You and UK are allies so to be ať war with UK you need first and alliance than your tension need to rise. It is very very unlikely that tension will not raise with another country earlier. Relating the design it was just example. I have not used deck extended armor at all. I have focus design for long range fire as to be in line with your previous design strategy and your fire control will improve till ship will fight first battle. However secondary battery could not do serious damage to your ship as you will be either outside the range or at edge of range, so 6" guns hit nothing important and protection against main guns are not efficient. As for DE armour - I may be wrong, but I think it provides the roof for either casemates or secondary turrets, so without it those casemates and turrets won't have splinter protection. I get that it's just an example, I wasn't trying to nitpick it - it's just very different from all my previous designs and is clearly based on completely different assumptions to the ones I have been working under, so I want to understand the reasoning behind it. Could you elaborate on why the turret roof is much thicker than the deck, and the turret face / CT thicker than the belt? Is a magazine explosion not just as likely to destroy the ship as a flash fire? As for the DE armour - in the process of developing different designs to be laid down this year, I have been aiming to get it up to the standard of protecting against Q0 10 inch fire at 12,000 yards, with the intention of invalidating the heavy secondary batteries of semi-dreadnoughts and the heavy main batteries of old armoured cruisers. While it could certainly be argued that a BC of 27 knots does not need to worry about pre-dreadnoughts, numerically superior CAs would be a concern, especially if I scrap all of my own CAs, as you suggest.
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Post by aeson on Mar 5, 2019 11:46:29 GMT -6
Your current tensions with Great Britain are low, and you have an alliance. It's possible that your tensions will rise, the alliance will fail, and you'll find yourself at war with Britain in five years, but it's not particularly likely unless you decide to provoke it.
As far as I am aware, turret flashfires and magazine explosions are equally likely to destroy the ship; I've never seen a ship survive either. The difference, though, is that turret flashfires seem more likely to result from turret penetrations than magazine explosions are to result from belt penetrations and also that turret penetrations on average more significantly reduce a ship's combat capability than belt penetrations will, at least in my experience.
BE armor doesn't protect anything too critical, ships that don't have anything heavier than a 6" gun are not likely to be a real threat to a battlecruiser, and protecting the turrets, magazines, and machinery spaces against heavy artillery is much more important than protecting the rest of the ship against light or medium artillery when it comes to using a battlecruiser to fight an equal or near-equal opponent.
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Post by generalvikus on Mar 5, 2019 12:03:08 GMT -6
aesonYeah, I realise that I forgot to respond to dorn's answer - it's true indeed that tensions are most likely to rise with another nation first and result in a war, after which tensions will reset once more. That is good reasoning. I don't mean to go out of my way to provoke a war with Britain - I won't deliberately select them in an event which lets you choose who to raise tensions with, for example - but I also didn't want to go out of my way to avoid it either, for no other reason than that I want to challenge myself and respond to whatever threats the game throws my way rather than avoiding them. And, of course, such a policy is rewarded with a nice, shiny prestige score. What do you (and dorn) think of the following argument: that since a ship with 2 inches of BE armour by definition doesn't have AoN armour, and since I presume that without AoN armour you don't have the benefit of having all the reserve flotation you need inside the citadel, such a ship can be sunk by a large enough number of ships to the BE and the unarmoured parts of the ship. Furthermore, since I plan to scrap all or most of my CAs and pre-dreanoughts, and since the AI will not immediately be doing the same for - as aeson suggested - the next 3 - 6 years, a ship completed in just under 3 years will still have to worry about the possibility of numerically superior older ships overwhelming it with a large number of medium calibre hits. Furthermore, if a ship with nothing larger than 6 inch guns poses no significant threat to a BC, then what about capital ships - old and new - armed with 6 inch secondaries, which can reach out to the range of 12,000 yards for which the ship is being designed, and will probably at some point be allowed to get closer by circumstance? Are you arguing that the explosive power of 6 inch ammunition is too small to do any serious damage, even if large numbers of shells penetrate?
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Post by dorn on Mar 5, 2019 12:49:00 GMT -6
aeson Yeah, I realise that I forgot to respond to dorn 's answer - it's true indeed that tensions are most likely to rise with another nation first and result in a war, after which tensions will reset once more. That is good reasoning. I don't mean to go out of my way to provoke a war with Britain - I won't deliberately select them in an event which lets you choose who to raise tensions with, for example - but I also didn't want to go out of my way to avoid it either, for no other reason than that I want to challenge myself and respond to whatever threats the game throws my way rather than avoiding them. And, of course, such a policy is rewarded with a nice, shiny prestige score. What do you (and dorn ) think of the following argument: that since a ship with 2 inches of BE armour by definition doesn't have AoN armour, and since I presume that without AoN armour you don't have the benefit of having all the reserve flotation you need inside the citadel, such a ship can be sunk by a large enough number of ships to the BE and the unarmoured parts of the ship. Furthermore, since I plan to scrap all or most of my CAs and pre-dreanoughts, and since the AI will not immediately be doing the same for - as aeson suggested - the next 3 - 6 years, a ship completed in just under 3 years will still have to worry about the possibility of numerically superior older ships overwhelming it with a large number of medium calibre hits. Furthermore, if a ship with nothing larger than 6 inch guns poses no significant threat to a BC, then what about capital ships - old and new - armed with 6 inch secondaries, which can reach out to the range of 12,000 yards for which the ship is being designed, and will probably at some point be allowed to get closer by circumstance? Are you arguing that the explosive power of 6 inch ammunition is too small to do any serious damage, even if large numbers of shells penetrate? If you are outnumbered closing distance is quite suicide.
Main principle is to design ship with certain strenght and use that strenght in battle. Your ships will have excellent protection at long range so you shoud use it especially knowing that very thin armor of British ship could not protect them even at very long range.
However sometimes you cannot choose distance and you need to fight even at shorter ranger. But you should not worry about BE so much but at this distance any non-capital ship is easily sunk by your battery earlier than that ship is able to make your ship heavily damaged. And if your enemy is capital ship that you should worry about her main guns not the secondaries. In that case the only chance to protect extended part of ship is to have narrow armor scheme with same thickness of belt through all ship and it is viable solution that can be used.
But if you are catch in short range by numerical superior enemy only luck can help you.
You should not worried about 6" guns of capital ships, their potential are insignificant compared to their main battery and you cannot protect ship against it except possibility I propose with narrow belt.
In my last game as A-H I have battle when I sunk 3 capital ships and turn back home before British superior numbers change the result of the battle. However I was unlucky as main 2 most modern battlecruisers find themselves in the middle of British battleship force at night. I have no chance no matter of how thick armor my battlecruisers had, dozens of 16" guns and several minutes was enough to end life of my 2 most modern battlecruisers.
You should design your ships by answering several question: 1. What is my strategy? How I will use that ship (short range, long range, against what ships?) 2. What are the threats the ship can face (eg. night attack by destroyers etc.) 3. What I can design in such displacement
4. Which threat are not siginificant and I can design ship without taking them into considaration (eg. 6" guns)
We can certainly offer designs but these designs could be worse if your strategy is not in line in design e.g. if we design ship for long range fight and you fight this ship decreasing range as possible, it would mean that design and strategy is not in line and ship could end badly. It is usually more most important (look at British battlecruisers - excellent at Falklands, terrible at Jutland, look at QEs at Jutland, they were designed to withstand that beating and fight back damaging several ships)
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Post by aeson on Mar 5, 2019 14:42:37 GMT -6
Shell damage is proportional to shell weight, and shell weight is roughly proportional to the cube of the shell's diameter. A 16" shell is a bit under 19 times heavier than a 6" shell, and even a 12" shell is about eight times heavier than a 6" shell. Dreadnought main batteries can typically put eight to ten guns into a broadside, the secondary battery can put at most twelve guns into a broadside, and 6" guns fire roughly twice as fast as heavy guns do if I'm interpreting the ROF column of Gundata.dat correctly. Even ignoring the main battery's advantages in effective range (heavier guns have a higher maximum range, and the secondary battery is under local control until the ship is fitted with secondary directors) and armor penetration, a single salvo from a dreadnought's main battery easily has five or more times the damage potential of a single salvo from the secondary battery. Add to that the fact that the main battery guns are more likely to hit at reasonable engagement ranges, that the main battery is probably at least close to a range where it can punch through the main belt armor by the time 6" secondary guns can reach the target, and that reasonable engagement ranges in the dreadnought period are too great for gunners to be able to accurately target specific parts of a ship, and ... well, let's just say that the secondary guns are not that much of a concern in an engagement between capital ships in the dreadnought era.
Regarding your concern about the secondary batteries of the predreadnoughts and semidreadnoughts: As things are right now, your 13"/Q0 guns will probably penetrate 11.5" belt armor within about 13,600 yards and 11" belt armor out to 14,500 yards; no predreadnought or semidreadnought listed in the Almanac is reported as having more than 11.5" and most are reported as having less than 11" of belt armor, and 9"/Q0 guns are listed as having a range of 14,300 yards while 6"/Q1 guns are reported as having a range of 12,280 yards. How many 6" or 9" guns do you think a predreadnought or semidreadnought needs to have reliably hitting your BE/DE armor to make up for the fact that your 13" guns are reliably penetrating their main belt at about the same range as their secondary batteries can engage your dreadnoughts?
Also, because it might help with evaluating the relative value of the main and extended sectors of armor, the main belt covers about 1.75 times as much area as the extended belt and the main deck covers about four times the area as the extended deck based on weight of armor per inch of thickness. Practical engagement ranges in the dreadnought era are too great to allow gunners to target specific parts of the ship (even assuming the game models that at shorter engagement ranges), so a belt hit is probably around 1.75 times as likely to hit the main belt as it is to hit the extended belt and a deck hit is probably around four times as likely to hit the main deck as it is to hit the extended deck, or to put it in terms of percentages about 64% of belt hits would be expected to hit the main belt while 80% of deck hits would be expected to hit the main deck. Main belt and main deck armor covers the central portion of the ship; extended belt armor is the upper belt strake (which on most ships of the period was thinner than the main armor belt) and the ends of the armor belt; and extended deck armor is that part of the armor deck that extends past the end of the main armor belt.
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 5, 2019 22:50:50 GMT -6
I must say, after looking at your save and some of your clarifications in this thread, I don't think your situation is nearly as dire as it appeared at first glance from your OP. You have 14" Q- available, and the British 15" guns are Q- guns, so you're only an inch behind with no quality difference, and from my experience the British *will* be that far ahead of you on guns through most of the game. I can build a battlecruiser in your save that I find quite satisfactory for 1912, and nothing that any opponent has in service makes me nervous at all. By building straight up to your 36,000 ton tonnage limit, I got the ship below: Taking that design and shaving half an inch off of deck, turret top, and secondary battery, reducing CT armor to splinter protection (2"), reducing secondary caliber to 5", and reducing ammo to 155 RPG gives me a ship of 30,000 tons, or, with those reductions and 150 RPG, you can build a 29 kt, 36000 ton ship. A medium between all of those that represents what I would probably build at this stage is something like this: Except for the general uneasiness that comes from the fact that the British initial lead takes most of the game to wear down, you have absolutely nothing to worry about, and given that you are presently allied with them, even that isn't much of a concern.
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Post by generalvikus on Mar 6, 2019 5:42:24 GMT -6
I must say, after looking at your save and some of your clarifications in this thread, I don't think your situation is nearly as dire as it appeared at first glance from your OP. You have 14" Q- available, and the British 15" guns are Q- guns, so you're only an inch behind with no quality difference, and from my experience the British *will* be that far ahead of you on guns through most of the game. I can build a battlecruiser in your save that I find quite satisfactory for 1912, and nothing that any opponent has in service makes me nervous at all. By building straight up to your 36,000 ton tonnage limit, I got the ship below: Taking that design and shaving half an inch off of deck, turret top, and secondary battery, reducing CT armor to splinter protection (2"), reducing secondary caliber to 5", and reducing ammo to 155 RPG gives me a ship of 30,000 tons, or, with those reductions and 150 RPG, you can build a 29 kt, 36000 ton ship. A medium between all of those that represents what I would probably build at this stage is something like this: Except for the general uneasiness that comes from the fact that the British initial lead takes most of the game to wear down, you have absolutely nothing to worry about, and given that you are presently allied with them, even that isn't much of a concern. It is true that the situation is less dire than I first feared, for the following reasons: The British have the worst guns they could have possibly had: Q-1 14 inch, Q-1 15 inch, and Q-2 13 inch guns. The British have a build limit of only 31,000, whereas the almanac listed the new British, Japanese and Italian ships as all weighing 32,500 tons. Furthermore, all of my ship designs up to this point considered sufficient BE armour to protect against medium calibre fire at 12,000 yards as a major requirement. However, if I go with what appears to be the majority consensus and reduce BE armour all the way down to 2 inches, the dilemma between speed, armour and firepower becomes much less acute. I like your design, but again, I think technology is a major factor which will limit its usefulness for me. According to this thread, which I started with a view to investigating possibilities for this save, the number of guns being fired in a given salvo will increase the accuracy of the salvo up to seven guns. Since your design has only 6 barrels, accuracy will always be less than it could be, but more importantly, I don't yet have reliable triple turrets. While I expect that I could prioritise turrets and gun mountings research to pretty well ensure that the tech became available by the time of the ship's completion, I cannot guarantee it, and doing so would also shift the research focus away from other things which are vitally important. Given this fact, I feel a 2x3 layout is simply too risky for me at this stage. I've spent a lot of time tinkering with potential designs of my own, and this is what I've come up with so far: This design is the leading BC candidate right now. Its armour is comfortably immune to the British 15 inch guns at any range up to 15,000 yards, and to the 14 inch guns at up to 12,000. Its guns will penetrate any current known British BC class at any range. At 25 knots, it can keep up with my existing four ship 25 knot squadron, and outpace the British battle line by one knot. This next design is the 'el cheapo' version: it makes every reasonable compromise to reduce the cost. At 30,000 tons, it is closer than the first design to the displacement of the foreign ships under construction, and is cheaper than my previous generation of BCs. While retaining the same amounts of armour protection, it uses flat deck on top of belt, which of course will protect the ship better against vertical penetrations but worse against horizontal penetrations, as well as being cheaper; it's not a bad compromise to make, considering that the ship's belt armour is designed to withstand enemy fire at combat ranges without the aid of the deck. The engines are coal fuelled instead of oil fuelled, and the secondary battery has been dropped down to 5 inches instead of 6. At 12 inches, the main battery will just about fail to penetrate the belt of the most heavily armoured current British capital ships at their maximum range, but their armour means that they will still be immune to any possible British ships at the same range, and all the way out to 20,000 yards. However, the two new 31,000 ton British BCs under construction may be even better armoured than the Tiger class, which may be a problem for the 12 inch guns, and generally the smaller guns are expected to fare worse going into the future. This design attempts to strike a balance between the two previous, retaining all of the cost saving measures of the el cheapo version, but reverting to 13 inch guns. Finally, here's my best guess at a ship which fits the doctrine that was proposed earlier in the thread by aeson and director: retaining the protection of all previous designs with a sloped deck configuration, its intention is to chew through enemy BCs at combat ranges once my own BC squadron has lured them in.
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Post by dorn on Mar 6, 2019 6:54:59 GMT -6
I would go with more armor than 13".
Right now it serves well but when your ships will be in battle it would take at least 3 years and penetration will improve significantly.
I suggest either decrease guns to 6 (for game purposes I cannot see difference between 6 or 8 guns salvo) or decrease deck armor to enhance vertical protection. 4" deck is quite thick and for my experience it is still very good even at games and at 1925. But your vertical protection will be absolute much earlier.
I would rather risk unfortunete hit to deck at extreme range (very unlikely) than lack of protection about 15-20000 yards (very likely) in future.
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Post by generalvikus on Mar 6, 2019 7:26:41 GMT -6
I would go with more armor than 13".
Right now it serves well but when your ships will be in battle it would take at least 3 years and penetration will improve significantly.
I suggest either decrease guns to 6 (for game purposes I cannot see difference between 6 or 8 guns salvo) or decrease deck armor to enhance vertical protection. 4" deck is quite thick and for my experience it is still very good even at games and at 1925. But your vertical protection will be absolute much earlier.
I would rather risk unfortunete hit to deck at extreme range (very unlikely) than lack of protection about 15-20000 yards (very likely) in future.
That's a good point - I think the BC designs are more able to drop the deck armour to 3.5 as they can more easily control the range, whereas the BB cannot dictate the range of the engagement and therefore should be protected at all ranges. The BC designs can therefore sacrifice a bit of deck armour, while the BBs can sacrifice a bit of firepower. Revised designs are as follows: Then again, the issue which is still in my mind regarding protection is the question of just what the effects of that sloped deck armour are against horizontally penetrating hits. @fredrickw or williammiller , could you comment on this? And now, a question for everybody - considering all of this discussion, what is your verdict on the question of which speed to work with - 21, 25, 27, or a combination? More broadly, do we want to match the other navies symmetrically, with a battlecruiser centric strategy, or asymmetrically, with a battleship centric strategy?
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Post by aeson on Mar 6, 2019 15:05:01 GMT -6
If you're really set on an eight-gun main battery, you might also consider for example a 3-2-3 or 3-3-2 configuration such as either of these: Regardless, I've never found a six-gun main battery to be problematic.
And now, a question for everybody - considering all of this discussion, what is your verdict on the question of which speed to work with - 21, 25, 27, or a combination? More broadly, do we want to match the other navies symmetrically, with a battlecruiser centric strategy, or asymmetrically, with a battleship centric strategy? You already have four 27kn battlecruisers under construction, and as such I would suggest that you not lay down any more 25kn battlecruisers.
As to the battleships or battlecruisers question, I personally prefer battlecruisers within the game, especially as a relatively isolated power such as the US, because battleships tend not to see much action outside of fleet battles and as such are usually less useful than battlecruisers are. Battleship-heavy fleets are a bit more appealing for powers such as Germany which share home sea zones with several potential opponents who, depending on how far into the game you are, can be near-equals or have the superior battle fleet (numerically, anyways), and so are more likely to see large fleet engagements. That said, both battleship-heavy and battlecruiser-heavy fleets can work for the US, and since battleships are worth a bit more fleet strength they might be slightly better for triggering colonial invasions, though none of the other powers except maybe Britain are going to put a serious fleet into the USA's home waters for any significant period of time anyways and so there's probably little practical difference, at least on the East and West Coasts and in the Caribbean. You don't seem to have included the designs.
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Post by rimbecano on Mar 6, 2019 17:08:51 GMT -6
I like your design, but again, I think technology is a major factor which will limit its usefulness for me. According to this thread, which I started with a view to investigating possibilities for this save, the number of guns being fired in a given salvo will increase the accuracy of the salvo up to seven guns. Since your design has only 6 barrels, accuracy will always be less than it could be, but more importantly, I don't yet have reliable triple turrets. While I expect that I could prioritise turrets and gun mountings research to pretty well ensure that the tech became available by the time of the ship's completion, I cannot guarantee it, and doing so would also shift the research focus away from other things which are vitally important. Given this fact, I feel a 2x3 layout is simply too risky for me at this stage. I've never found 2x3 arrangements to suffer badly in combat from unreliable triple turrets. In any case, my main point is that I can build ships that fit my routine construction doctrine quite well in your save, so it's possible to build something at least decent. You don't have to go with my designs, and most people don't minmax on performance/ton as aggressively as I do, they're just a demonstration of what's possible.
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