|
Post by dorn on Feb 24, 2020 10:43:57 GMT -6
This time I will focus on carrier designs. I will present some facts, some conclusions and suggestion. I hope it will open even some debate. We know that some features as angled deck or side elevators will be added but carriers are main weapon platform added in RTW2. So we can look on them and see how they develop in RTW2 and compare to other ship type. We can see how battleships develop through time rapidly mainly in the first 20 years and as they mature they developing is slowed focused mainly on improvement of technologies they use to be built as machinery, armour, hull, fire control, later radar, AA weapons etc. It is quite similar in other type of ships as cruisers and destroyers which has been already matured in 20s. Now we can look at carriers which were completely new weapon platform in 20s and in history they developed considerably that carriers built in 20s very quickly got obsolete even if they can carry sometimes even high number of aircrafts. To show it easily, I choose some parametres for light carrier built in 1928 (Germany 1920 start) with 34 aircrafts, speed of 30 knots, 2" belt and 1" deck armour (magazine box), reasonable AA guns (12 LAA, 18 MAA) and TDS level 3 protection. As you can see on picture bellow, such carrier costs M. Now we move in time almost 30 years and design carrier with similar parameters (end 1955, France) - 34 aircrafts, speed of 30 knots, 2" belt and 1" deck armour (magazine bxo), reasonable AA guns (20 LAA, 30 MAA, 4 AA directors), TDS level 4 protection and 2 deck catapults. As you can see carrier designed almost 30 years later has similar design parametres having only 472 tons free and a little better TDS and catapults that allow spotting be better by only 2. So there is no real development in design itself. Some of the improvements, which all of them are not based on design itself, are based on better technology which lower landing accident risks, readying times of aircrafts, effectiveness of CAPs. But these technologies are applied even to old designs so even carriers quite old has still efficiency even after 20 or 30 years. It is something as cruiser build in 1900 is still effective in 1920 or even later which is completely nonsense. SuggestionsThere are several suggestion how to solve it, just some ideas, some simply ones, some more complex. 1. Simple coefficient to carrier operations Having some hidden value similar to "armour mod" to have effect on efficiency of carrier operations of planes 2. Aircrafts a) To have some dimension of aircrafts and make decision of hangar height which can limit later usefulness (it has effect on hull weight and armour weight) b) Adding development of folding wings to increase storage capacity c) Adding possibility to have spares if hangar height is enough (if not implemented that just make some weight possible). If carrier squadrons are depleted it will be taken from spares first so next battle in next month carriers with spare has chance that their airwing is not depleted so much 3. Long and extreme range has effect a) long range and extreme range has higher effect that carrier is included in battle as it extend time of operation in are as long range in this case does not mean only fuel for ship but for extended operations like ammunition, avgas
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 24, 2020 11:00:18 GMT -6
Here are some things I noticed about your designs. I would not put Engine Priority at speed as it reduces reliability. I would opt for normal.
I feel that this ship has too many main guns. Carriers are mobile airfields. light and medium AA guns are the most appropriate since you should have destroyers, light cruisers and possibly battleships protecting the carriers and the carrier force should be behind the main battle fleet. This design should be a fleet carrier, IMO.
I would reduce the tonnage, increase the speed and reduce the air wing if you want this to be a light carrier.
I concur with your suggestions.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 24, 2020 17:01:50 GMT -6
My current game is around 1928. Here is light carrier design of mine for you to examine and help me to improve. Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 24, 2020 22:10:45 GMT -6
Here is a light aircraft carrier in development. Criticism of its design and suggestions are definitely welcome. I might increase speed and armor thickness on the conning tower for protection.
|
|
|
Post by dizzy on Feb 25, 2020 0:51:58 GMT -6
dorn Hangar space, capacity, plane height are all attributes best handled by having an additional plane characteristic. How detailed you want that to be, like does it have folding wings, tail, etc., are all things to be considered. I think the carrier should just have a basic generic hangar space that can accommodate whatever and however many aircraft that may fit in that space limited by whatever added plane attribute(s) affecting use of larger more capable and advanced plane designs on older carriers. Problem solved.
|
|
|
Post by wlbjork on Feb 25, 2020 1:34:09 GMT -6
Indeed, one of the biggest advantages of aircraft carriers - and more recently VLS cells - is that the "main battery" can be changed without needed extensive rebuilds as used to* happen in the pre-dreadnought/dreadnought era.
*Not all that common though, usually because a major change of armament was extensive and often close to the time and cost of a new ship, which would have better weight distribution, engines and protection.
|
|
|
Post by dorn on Feb 25, 2020 6:35:08 GMT -6
Here are some things I noticed about your designs. I would not put Engine Priority at speed as it reduces reliability. I would opt for normal. I feel that this ship has too many main guns. Carriers are mobile airfields. light and medium AA guns are the most appropriate since you should have destroyers, light cruisers and possibly battleships protecting the carriers and the carrier force should be behind the main battle fleet. This design should be a fleet carrier, IMO. I would reduce the tonnage, increase the speed and reduce the air wing if you want this to be a light carrier. I concur with your suggestions. Thanks for the comments oldpop2000. The carriers were not designed to be best but more about showing that even 30 years of technology does not change how efficient carrier is that even 30 years old carrier has practically same efficiency as brand new carrier and as it is exactly opposite to history when carriers built in 20s and partially 30s were inefficient compared to carriers built just before WW2 or during WW2.
|
|
|
Post by dorn on Feb 25, 2020 6:39:53 GMT -6
My current game is around 1928. Here is light carrier design of mine for you to examine and help me to improve. Thanks. I do not believe in best solution. There are several approaches which give good solution and every one of these can be better at certain situation. But overall I prefer torpedo protection and number of aircrafts on light carriers as no armour can protect light carriers against bombs without sacrifice of too many aircrafts. So I usually design light carriers without armour but with reasonable torpedo protection and with maximum 34 aircrafts. But with the first CVLs (usually till start of 30s) I usually built some smaller ones, slower, cheaper, less aicrafts to save money as I do not believe to carrier efficiency at that time. But I still believe that carrier is reasonable support vessel through 20s.
|
|
|
Post by dorn on Feb 25, 2020 6:42:34 GMT -6
Here is a light aircraft carrier in development. Criticism of its design and suggestions are definitely welcome. I might increase speed and armor thickness on the conning tower for protection. This is something very close that I usually built as modern light carrier, fast, large air wings, excellent torpedo protection and basic armour protection. The only difference is that I use heavy AA guns - 4" or 5" DP guns. But on light carriers I limit their number, on fleet carriers I have usually a lot of them as carriers protects each other in case of air attack.
|
|
|
Post by dorn on Feb 25, 2020 7:21:09 GMT -6
Indeed, one of the biggest advantages of aircraft carriers - and more recently VLS cells - is that the "main battery" can be changed without needed extensive rebuilds as used to* happen in the pre-dreadnought/dreadnought era. *Not all that common though, usually because a major change of armament was extensive and often close to the time and cost of a new ship, which would have better weight distribution, engines and protection. Yes, it is in game. But in history it was not and this is exactly I decided to show. If you look into history, you can see that all carriers built in 20s has issues to operate as efficient as modern WW2 carriers. Sometime it was because of design flaws, sometimes because design was not adjusted to procedures created after construction finish etc. But overall it means that these carriers were less than ideal for the first line service as fleet carriers.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 25, 2020 11:17:56 GMT -6
Here are some things I noticed about your designs. I would not put Engine Priority at speed as it reduces reliability. I would opt for normal. I feel that this ship has too many main guns. Carriers are mobile airfields. light and medium AA guns are the most appropriate since you should have destroyers, light cruisers and possibly battleships protecting the carriers and the carrier force should be behind the main battle fleet. This design should be a fleet carrier, IMO. I would reduce the tonnage, increase the speed and reduce the air wing if you want this to be a light carrier. I concur with your suggestions. Thanks for the comments oldpop2000 . The carriers were not designed to be best but more about showing that even 30 years of technology does not change how efficient carrier is that even 30 years old carrier has practically same efficiency as brand new carrier and as it is exactly opposite to history when carriers built in 20s and partially 30s were inefficient compared to carriers built just before WW2 or during WW2. The only problem with thirty year old carriers is that the aircraft technology has changed. They get bigger, faster and especially heavier. So wing folding becomes necessary, as does reinforcing the carrier decks which I don't think the game duplicates. Hangar spaces also have an issue because you try to store main parts like whole aircraft up in the roof or wings, tails etc. So vertical space of the hangar is important. Ordnance get bigger and heavier, so the ordnance vehicles and movers have to be improved. So, can thirty year old carriers be used? Yes, if you continue to deploy older aircraft to augment the main fleet carrier force. This is how we used them in WW2. We continued to use the later F4F Wildcats. Deck parks makes this problem much, much easier.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 25, 2020 11:20:21 GMT -6
Indeed, one of the biggest advantages of aircraft carriers - and more recently VLS cells - is that the "main battery" can be changed without needed extensive rebuilds as used to* happen in the pre-dreadnought/dreadnought era. *Not all that common though, usually because a major change of armament was extensive and often close to the time and cost of a new ship, which would have better weight distribution, engines and protection. Yes, it is in game. But in history it was not and this is exactly I decided to show. If you look into history, you can see that all carriers built in 20s has issues to operate as efficient as modern WW2 carriers. Sometime it was because of design flaws, sometimes because design was not adjusted to procedures created after construction finish etc. But overall it means that these carriers were less than ideal for the first line service as fleet carriers. I agree about the older carriers. My dad was an aviation ordnanceman on the USS Saratoga and he told me about the problem of moving larger ordnance and aircraft around on that narrow deck. They managed due to deck parks, but it was still a problem for them.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 25, 2020 12:24:28 GMT -6
I wonder if the team could implement converting merchant ships to escort carriers. It might be fun. There would have to minimum size and speed but it would be fun. Here is an example of a C3-class Merchant used for the Bogue class. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_C3-class_ship
|
|
|
Post by akosjaccik on Feb 25, 2020 13:03:39 GMT -6
I wonder if the team could implement converting merchant ships to escort carriers. Although in a bit convoluted and not necessarily trivial manner, the game already features this. Carrier conversions can be done on AMCs. This does mean that this (to be precise, starting the conversion) is only possible under wartime conditions, as the player needs to "build" the AMC, and then begin to convert it to a CVL / CVE, but strictly speaking, there is a way to emulate the real process.
|
|
|
Post by Antediluvian Monster on Feb 25, 2020 14:22:27 GMT -6
I feel like representing the whole thing down to detail would be overcomplicated. I'd nail it down to hangar capacity (complement reduces with time) and lift power (dictates hard limit on size of airframe that can be operated). Furthermore I'd quantify both values, as well as the size of aircraft, with single abstract size value.
For example:
Carrier A has 60,000 hangar capacity as well as 3,000 lift power.
Aircraft B has size rating of 3,000.
Carrier A can fit 20 Aircraft Bs into it's hangar and Aircraft B is also the largest possible aircraft Carrier A can operate.
In pracrise these values would represent multiple real life issues, e.g. lift power would also represent hangar ceiling, catapult limitations, folding wings enabling an aircraft to fit on a lift dimensions wise and so on.
|
|