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Post by rimbecano on Aug 5, 2019 2:34:07 GMT -6
I use, specifically, a 2x3 AB configuration. Six guns are all you really need to maintain accurate fire, and as long as you can land shots on target the important thing is penetrating power and bursting charge size, not number of shells, so you can shave weight off by using 6 guns instead of 8+. When you get the tech for the short citadel bonus, you get further weight savings, so in the end you end up with the performance of a much larger ship without the price tag, such makes it all the more critical fo small nations. My general rule is '6 guns +1 turret' so that ideally six guns will always be firing even when one turret is disabled. EDIT: On a similar note, it's worth remembering that, with an A/B/Y arrangement, in any circumstance in which only the Y turret is firing, you'll take an accuracy penalty for firing a small salvo. It could be argued that, at least in certain situations, you'd be better off saving the ammunition and waiting until you can fire accurately with a full salvo. I'm fully aware of the loss of redundancy in a 2x3 configuration, I just find that the extra performance or reduced cost gained from the reduced number of guns is worth it, especially once the short citadel bonus becomes available. Also, in larger actions, you have enough redundancy at the fleet level that per-ship redundancy isn't as important. |
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Post by tbr on Aug 5, 2019 4:12:08 GMT -6
... in any circumstance in which only the Y turret is firing, you'll take an accuracy penalty for firing a small salvo. Ah, what??? You need four guns for the full ranging effect. One quad in Y should avoid the penalty. |
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Post by BathTubAdmiral on Aug 5, 2019 4:48:20 GMT -6
You need four guns for the full ranging effect. One quad in Y should avoid the penalty. .. so 1-gun turret designs are a bad idea, unless you have 4 of them shooting at a target simultaneously? Oh my ... that explains why my CL with 2x 9" guns didn't hit s***! The manual really needs some work ...
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Post by dorn on Aug 5, 2019 6:16:36 GMT -6
EDIT: On a similar note, it's worth remembering that, with an A/B/Y arrangement, in any circumstance in which only the Y turret is firing, you'll take an accuracy penalty for firing a small salvo. It could be argued that, at least in certain situations, you'd be better off saving the ammunition and waiting until you can fire accurately with a full salvo. But enemy has accuracy modifier for under fire. This is important if you need disengage which is usually only time you fire Y turret only in long time run. |
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Post by director on Aug 5, 2019 6:26:58 GMT -6
BathTubAdmiral - One of the reasons for going to a 'Dreadnought' configuration was fire control at increasing ranges. Naval experts of the day estimated that it was necessary to have an 8-gun salvo to accurately find and keep range and rate-of-change data - in other words, with 8 guns you can under-over-hit with a 'ladder' of pairs of shells, or do it twice with two sets of four. There are exceptions to this - HMS Renown (I think) was supposedly a superior gunnery ship with just 6 guns in her main armament. But in general firing a small number of guns means it takes longer to get the range and it is harder to keep it on a moving target. I do not know if the game models this (I suspect it does) but in real-life, this was the reason all 'Dreadnought'-type capital ships could fire an 8-gun-plus broadside. Apologies if you already knew this - couldn't tell from the emojis what you were surprised about.
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Post by dorn on Aug 5, 2019 8:24:48 GMT -6
I think RTW simulates only small salvo less than 4 guns, no guarantee.
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Post by ulzgoroth on Aug 5, 2019 11:29:10 GMT -6
I use, specifically, a 2x3 AB configuration. Six guns are all you really need to maintain accurate fire, and as long as you can land shots on target the important thing is penetrating power and bursting charge size, not number of shells, so you can shave weight off by using 6 guns instead of 8+. When you get the tech for the short citadel bonus, you get further weight savings, so in the end you end up with the performance of a much larger ship without the price tag, such makes it all the more critical fo small nations. I've found a good use for many guns of smaller size in disabling turrets. The sheer volume of shells means multiple hits per turn, and since each hit, penetrating or not, can knock out a whole turret you bring down their firepower far faster Yeah, for many types of hits it doesn't seem at all evident that bursting charge size is an issue. Penetrating turret hits particularly. |
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Post by tbr on Aug 5, 2019 11:38:40 GMT -6
BathTubAdmiral - One of the reasons for going to a 'Dreadnought' configuration was fire control at increasing ranges. Naval experts of the day estimated that it was necessary to have an 8-gun salvo to accurately find and keep range and rate-of-change data - in other words, with 8 guns you can under-over-hit with a 'ladder' of pairs of shells, or do it twice with two sets of four. There are exceptions to this - HMS Renown (I think) was supposedly a superior gunnery ship with just 6 guns in her main armament. But in general firing a small number of guns means it takes longer to get the range and it is harder to keep it on a moving target. I do not know if the game models this (I suspect it does) but in real-life, this was the reason all 'Dreadnought'-type capital ships could fire an 8-gun-plus broadside. Apologies if you already knew this - couldn't tell from the emojis what you were surprised about. That is an "advanced" technique with benefits and drawbacks. IIRC the German Navy, with better ranging optics and training for North Sea engagement ranges, could dispense with this apporach at some point. Then even 8gun ships usually fired half-broadsides for ranging shots, which gave them a quicker shoot-look-shoot cycle. Four is the minimum amount of shot splashes you need to reliably optically estimate whether you "straddle" i.e. whether you "got the range" and can go to rapid fire. Pre-Dreadnoughts (but for the French and Austrians) usually had four main gun broadsides for this reason as well (at their lower engagement ranges the 8gun ladder shoot would probably have been excessive).
8 (or more) gun ladder shooting covers a wider range error for a longer correction cycle (all guns need to reload for a full boradside). Gunnery officers who begin with a better range estimate would shoot half broadsides for the quicker correction cycle, this meant that only the time of travel of the rounds restricted deliberate (ranging) ROF. Later, with quicker reload and longer engagement ranges this difference also could become moot but in any case there was ammo conversation to consider, you only go to rapid fire (firing cycle shorter than round travel time to target) when you "got the range".
Later, when advance radar fire control becomes available that can detect shot splashes, that "less than four gun" malus should be abolished however. |
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 5, 2019 13:12:01 GMT -6
BathTubAdmiral - One of the reasons for going to a 'Dreadnought' configuration was fire control at increasing ranges. Naval experts of the day estimated that it was necessary to have an 8-gun salvo to accurately find and keep range and rate-of-change data - in other words, with 8 guns you can under-over-hit with a 'ladder' of pairs of shells, or do it twice with two sets of four. There are exceptions to this - HMS Renown (I think) was supposedly a superior gunnery ship with just 6 guns in her main armament. But in general firing a small number of guns means it takes longer to get the range and it is harder to keep it on a moving target. I do not know if the game models this (I suspect it does) but in real-life, this was the reason all 'Dreadnought'-type capital ships could fire an 8-gun-plus broadside. Apologies if you already knew this - couldn't tell from the emojis what you were surprised about. Actually it was 3 to 4 shells that were necessary for good spotting: fewer and there weren't enough shells in the ladder to get a good picture of whether you were aiming short, long, or on target, more and there were too many splashes at once to reliably count overs and unders. Eight guns was preferred because it let you do alternating half-salvos of four, which gave turrets extra time to deal with errors in drill, mechanical problems, etc, without holding up the next salvo, and because you could lose two guns for an extended period and still do alternating half-salvos of three. |
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Post by Blothorn on Aug 5, 2019 14:00:14 GMT -6
I recall it coming up in the discussions leading to the Admiral class that the Renown class had ranging difficulties, although I am not certain details (particularly whether the problem was too few guns or inadequate redundancy over minimum thresholds).
I thought the minimum was 6 guns in-game; 4 makes AY much more interesting, particularly before all-forward is researched. (After then I kind of like AL--the lightest of all two-turret layouts and without adjacent-turret vulnerabilities, although the fire arcs are terrible.)
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Post by director on Aug 5, 2019 17:22:26 GMT -6
I've seen quotes from gunnery officers stating that an 8-gun broadside was a good idea, for reasons stated. 'Renown' evidently managed to shoot well with a smaller battery - and I'm confident some enterprising gunnery officer could make do in situations with less. But an 8-gun battery is a good minimum standard. Not an absolute, but a good benchmark.
We may not think of warships as being extremely fast, compared to a car or even a fast power boat, but in the firing cycle of a major caliber gun (call it 30 seconds at full rate), adding in flight-time to target (I'll use 30 seconds as an example for a nice total of one minute) that capital ship (a 4000-square-foot target at rough guess, 60x600' plus some space for a near miss) traveling at 20 knots will travel through some 2000 feet (if I have the math right). As big as capital ships are, they take up only a fraction of where-they-could be, which is why it is so hard to get much above 4-5% hits.
Some nice, informative comments. Thank you!
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Post by kriegsmeister on Aug 6, 2019 8:04:45 GMT -6
Thanks for all the help guys, a lot of information to help in designing my ships, and the last few post about ranging with few guns is probably why my early game dirt cheap 2 gun B's couldn't hit the broadside of a barn from the inside
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Post by director on Aug 6, 2019 9:33:13 GMT -6
kriegsmeister - oh, they could - it's just that the pesky barn was moving LOL.
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 6, 2019 13:55:02 GMT -6
I recall it coming up in the discussions leading to the Admiral class that the Renown class had ranging difficulties, although I am not certain details (particularly whether the problem was too few guns or inadequate redundancy over minimum thresholds). Well, firing half-salvos of 3 guns would require splitting a turret with the 3x2 configuration, which might be awkward, and firing one-third salvos would give only two guns per salvo, and the loss of any single gun would make it impossible to do alternating half-salvos without either needing at least one gun to fire on each of two adjacent half salvos (and having to delay firing if at least one of the guns that fired the last half salvo isn't ready for the next) , or dropping to two guns for one half salvo. |
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Post by fritz1776 on Sept 18, 2019 15:37:15 GMT -6
... in any circumstance in which only the Y turret is firing, you'll take an accuracy penalty for firing a small salvo. Ah, what??? I think he's saying that if you have too few guns on target you'll be less accurate, since you can't tell what your standard deviation is. It's why having just 1 or 2 heavy guns is a bad idea, and should probably aim for at least 3 or 4 of any given caliber. IMO if you're going to have a 3 turrets and superfiring... you should have all three superfiring Atlanta style. But the game doesn't allow that (yet) so A-V-Y is my preference. If you are in pursuit the extra turret isn't as important as when you are taking flight, and in any real fight you'll be firing broadside anyways. On the other hand if you are trying to run away, you don't want to be moving oblique, and peppering the enemy with a high volume of fire can potentially save your skin. Of course this is if you restrict yourself to 3 turrets. Personally my favorite is 2 forward 2 rear both superfiring, with 2 or 3 guns in each depending on my tech level/displacement. |
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