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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 5, 2019 14:40:07 GMT -6
I've been told there are no limitations in the game for the Panama Canal. This should be changed. The requirements until 2014 were 106 ft., 107 ft. for ships with a draft less than 37 ft.
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Post by dizzy on Nov 5, 2019 14:58:07 GMT -6
Well, there's no Draft or Width characteristics for ship design. But you have an excellent point. Ships bigger than Iowa may have difficulty passing through the locks. How big is the Suez Canal? This is kind of a big deal...
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 5, 2019 15:12:32 GMT -6
Well, there's no Draft or Width characteristics for ship design. But you have an excellent point. Ships bigger than Iowa may have difficulty passing through the locks. How big is the Suez Canal? This is kind of a big deal... The naval architecture term is Suezmax. Its only limiting factors are height due to the bridge and draft. Currently the minimum draft is 66 ft. and the maximum boat length is 254 ft. 3 in. I don't know the specifications for the games time period, but it is important. By the 1960's the minimum width was 179 feet at a depth of 33 ft. and the channel depth was 40 feet at low tide. I would go with those specifications. For the Panama Canal, the Iowa class could barely make it, the Montana class could not. |
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Post by dizzy on Nov 5, 2019 15:19:37 GMT -6
There'd have to be Width and Draft features added to the game to enable this idea. I say they go for it. I'd like to see this level of detail represented in the game.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 5, 2019 15:51:45 GMT -6
Another issue is the sagging due to speed. Ships have to slow down when entering harbors if their draught at speed causes the stern to sag. For San Diego Harbor, the carrier must slow down to less than 10 knots. Dogger Bank has the same issues, ships must slow down or they will ground out. Its a peninsula from Northern Europe flooded after the Pleistocene. The depth of water is from 120 ft. to 50 ft. If a ship has a fully loaded draft of 40 ft. then at 20 to 25 knots, this ship might ground out on certain sections of the peninsula.
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Post by 13th Fleet on Nov 5, 2019 17:23:31 GMT -6
I mean, currently ships don't even run aground if you ram the shoreline at top speed.
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Post by aeson on Nov 5, 2019 17:29:23 GMT -6
For the Panama Canal, the Iowa class could barely make it, the Montana class could not. The original locks were around 1000' x 110' x 40'. As to the Montanas not being able to fit, that's sort of true and sort of false - there were plans at the time to add a new, larger set of locks (roughly 1200' x 140' x 45') which would've been able to accommodate the Montanas, and some of the work to create them was done during the 1940s, but the project was abandoned and ships with the physical dimensions of the Montanas would not have been able to fit through the then-existing locks. Also, saying that the Iowas could make it and the Montanas could not is not in and of itself very helpful, because the only things about the Iowas' and Montanas' sizes that translates easily to the game are their displacements ... but if you go by displacement, you have a problem, because some of the Tillman or Maximum Battleships, as sketched for the design studies, would then be larger than the Montanas and were meant to be of a size capable of transiting the Panama Canal.
As to implementing Panamax within the game: - Limiting passage by displacement alone would be unsatisfactory in my opinion because ships of similar displacement can have very different lengths, beams, and drafts, which could lead to edge cases like a 70,000t Tillman I approximation being super-Panamax or a 70,000t Montana approximation being Panamax despite the historical designs upon which the approximations are based being Panamax and super-Panamax respectively.
- Adding length/beam/draft information seems like it'd require quite a bit of work for very minimal gain. The US is the only power that's all that likely to be affected since Northern Europe <> Northeast Asia is as short via Suez as via Panama and the Mediterranean <> Northeast Asia is shorter via Suez and and no longer via the Cape of Good Hope than it is via Panama within the game. Beyond that, unless you're playing as or fighting the USA or Japan, there's not really that much reason to send major warships to the Pacific, because Northern Europe and the Mediterranean are much more critical sea zones in most of the wars that you'll fight and colonies are often hardly worth the cost of invading. - A vaguely realistic Panamax limit could probably be derived from the design displacement, the design speed, and the engine power required to attain the design speed, but unless a Panamax yes/no field were added that'd be too hidden from the player, because I dare say that most of us do not have the necessary knowledge to do that kind of dimensional estimation. Going back to the example of the 70,000-ton Tillman I and Montana approximations, it could also create problems understanding why one is Panamax while the other is not - and how to control that using the variables at our disposal. - The computer might need to be made to consider whether it cares about Panamax.
Overall, I think you're asking for a lot of increased complexity for very little gain.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 5, 2019 17:40:42 GMT -6
For the Panama Canal, the Iowa class could barely make it, the Montana class could not. The original locks were around 1000' x 110' x 40'. As to the Montanas not being able to fit, that's sort of true and sort of false - there were plans at the time to add a new, larger set of locks (roughly 1200' x 140' x 45') which would've been able to accommodate the Montanas, and some of the work to create them was done during the 1940s, but the project was abandoned and ships with the physical dimensions of the Montanas would not have been able to fit through the then-existing locks. Also, saying that the Iowas could make it and the Montanas could not is not in and of itself very helpful, because the only things about the Iowas' and Montanas' sizes that translates easily to the game are their displacements ... but if you go by displacement, you have a problem, because some of the Tillman or Maximum Battleships, as sketched for the design studies, would then be larger than the Montanas and were meant to be of a size capable of transiting the Panama Canal.
As to implementing Panamax within the game: - Limiting passage by displacement alone would be unsatisfactory in my opinion because ships of similar displacement can have very different lengths, beams, and drafts, which could lead to edge cases like a 70,000t Tillman I approximation being super-Panamax or a 70,000t Montana approximation being Panamax despite the historical designs upon which the approximations are based being Panamax and super-Panamax respectively.
- Adding length/beam/draft information seems like it'd require quite a bit of work for very minimal gain. The US is the only power that's all that likely to be affected since Northern Europe <> Northeast Asia is as short via Suez as via Panama and the Mediterranean <> Northeast Asia is shorter via Suez and and no longer via the Cape of Good Hope than it is via Panama within the game. Beyond that, unless you're playing as or fighting the USA or Japan, there's not really that much reason to send major warships to the Pacific, because Northern Europe and the Mediterranean are much more critical sea zones in most of the wars that you'll fight and colonies are often hardly worth the cost of invading. - A vaguely realistic Panamax limit could probably be derived from the design displacement, the design speed, and the engine power required to attain the design speed, but unless a Panamax yes/no field were added that'd be too hidden from the player, because I dare say that most of us do not have the necessary knowledge to do that kind of dimensional estimation. Going back to the example of the 70,000-ton Tillman I and Montana approximations, it could also create problems understanding why one is Panamax while the other is not - and how to control that using the variables at our disposal. - The computer might need to be made to consider whether it cares about Panamax.
Overall, I think you're asking for a lot of increased complexity for very little gain.
I believe and have documentation that military geography is important in naval warfare... all warfare. The US Navy conducted a Fleet Exercise against the Panama Canal so they must have thought it was important. I leave the assessment to the Team. |
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Post by rimbecano on Nov 6, 2019 4:26:35 GMT -6
Also, saying that the Iowas could make it and the Montanas could not is not in and of itself very helpful, because the only things about the Iowas' and Montanas' sizes that translates easily to the game are their displacements ... but if you go by displacement, you have a problem, because some of the Tillman or Maximum Battleships, as sketched for the design studies, would then be larger than the Montanas and were meant to be of a size capable of transiting the Panama Canal. [/div] As to implementing Panamax within the game: - Limiting passage by displacement alone would be unsatisfactory in my opinion because ships of similar displacement can have very different lengths, beams, and drafts, which could lead to edge cases like a 70,000t Tillman I approximation being super-Panamax or a 70,000t Montana approximation being Panamax despite the historical designs upon which the approximations are based being Panamax and super-Panamax respectively.
The Tillmans were actually 25 feet longer than official Panamax, though length seems to be the dimension of Panamax that had the most margin, and the Iowas were actually wider than Panamax (so that they had 1 ft of margin on either side, rather than the 2 ft they'd have if actually compliant).
The big thing that allowed the Tillmans to fit in the locks at that tonnage was a fuller hull form (higher block coefficient) than the Montanas or Iowas, which they could do, because all were slower than Iowa, and all but Tillman III were slower than Montana (and note that Tillman III is the smallest of the three). You can see the effect of different block coefficients in that all the Tillman designs had the same length x width x draft, but varied in tonnage by nearly 20kton.
A Panamax brick (that is, a rectangular box that filled out the Panamax dimensions) would displace about 110kton, but would not be a very suitable warship. |
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Post by aeson on Nov 6, 2019 10:22:17 GMT -6
Tillman I and II were meant to hit 26.5 knots with WWI-era machinery; I would be unsurprised if a very similar design could match Montana's 28 knots with WWII-era machinery and maybe a little revision of hull form below the waterline - especially since the Tillmans are overall longer and thinner than Montana, which tends to be a good thing for speed.
Really, though, this is just nitpicking that highlights the problem with using displacement as a stand in for length/beam/draft.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 6, 2019 11:06:58 GMT -6
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Post by dorn on Nov 6, 2019 13:07:59 GMT -6
Had Royal Navy or IJN some excercises?
USN fleet problems are relatively well known but I would be suprised that other Navies did no even smaller excercises.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Nov 6, 2019 13:16:50 GMT -6
Had Royal Navy or IJN some excercises? USN fleet problems are relatively well known but I would be suprised that other Navies did no even smaller excercises. The Imperial Japanese Navy did have fleet exercises and in fact began them before the Sino-Japanese War. I believe, but haven't been able to confirm that the British had fleet exercises both in the North Sea and the Med. I will have to research this. The problem with the IJN exercises was that they were fixed. In other words, there was an established outcome. Essentially, they planned their exercises and later, their wartime operations for what the US would do, not what we could do. They read our books and decided that this was the way we had to fight. Well, the US Navy reads the books, then does exactly whatever they wanted, most of the time it doesn't jive with the books. Unrestricted submarine warfare declaration after Pearl Harbor caught the Japanese Navy by surprise as did the invasion of Guadalcanal only about seven months after Pearl Harbor. |
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