How heavily do you armor your BE?

[rockmedic109]

My first games had been 4" {for B and BB}.  Mainly to keep DD size weapon immunity.


This time through, I am going for about 2" less than the Belt.  I don't have as many slow downs to stem flooding, so it seems better.

[retsof]

I've been basing it on whatever main guns I have on the ship in question. belt is close range self immunity, BE is long range self immunity.

[dorn]

Mar 16, 2020 16:36:31 GMT -6 rockmedic109 said:

My first games had been 4" {for B and BB}.  Mainly to keep DD size weapon immunity.


This time through, I am going for about 2" less than the Belt.  I don't have as many slow downs to stem flooding, so it seems better.

It depends on time.

Early in game, usually till 1905-1910 I use quite a lot of armour on BE, sometimes using uniform thickness with main belt and saving weight by narrow armour. Some times against only 6" guns, sometimes even 10" guns of armoured cruisers. 
At around 1908-1910 as dreadnoughts and battlecruisers are quite common, I starts using protection against 6" guns, so 2-4" of armour. As AoN is available it solve everything. 

[aeson]

I generally go with 2" BE normal belt (usually on first class cruisers and battleships without AoN) or nothing (always for CL/CVL/CV/armored-AV or with AoN, often for heavy cruisers with or without AoN, sometimes for battleships and battlecruisers without AoN starting in the later part of the dreadnought era or the early part of the superdreadnought era), though sometimes I'll do uniform (B=BE) narrow belts in the predreadnought and, more rarely, early dreadnought eras.

[oldpop2000]

My designs are based on the missions for the type of ship I am building. The cruisers, be they light or heavy, generally have three roles. One is to protect seaborne trade against raider, support the battle fleet as scouts and against torpedo attacks finally to show the flag in my overseas areas.

The nation I am representing, its economic capability and its possible enemies are the keys along with the all important: topography. Essentially, who are my possible opponents and what are their priorities. Where is my nation located and what are the topographic features unique to this nation.

Trade protection, in real history requires numbers of cruisers, but I can't really say this is true in the game. My light cruiser designs are either standard or colonials. They are all the same basic design. I try to save weight, by reducing the belt extended or eliminating it altogether to allow for more range, speed and better firepower.

For scouts and battle fleet protection, speed and rounds per minute are important to me, because my possible opponents will be destroyers. I don't feel that heavy armor is better, it takes up too much weight and reduces speed.
As to capital ships, survival is important to me. The battleship, armored cruiser, battle cruiser and pre-dreadnought ships are basically floating gun batteries and this is important to be used successfully. Armor protection is important as these are very expensive ships and must be protected. Speed isn't that important.

All my designs are a balance of survivability, offensive power and cost per performance. As my games proceed through the years and technology is improved, I try to enhance my designs but still maintain those three important factors that must be balance.

[rimbecano]

I used to avoid BE/DE entirely outside of the first 5-ish years of the game, but had too many problems with capital ships ending up with huge amounts of flooding due to light BE/DE hits. These days I tend to do 2" of BE and 1" DE for capital ships before AoN, and nothing on cruisers at any time, or on capital ships after AON.

[retsof]

Mar 16, 2020 17:11:15 GMT -6 retsof said:

I've been basing it on whatever main guns I have on the ship in question. belt is close range self immunity, BE is long range self immunity.

Don't listen to me I'm a dumb noob.  Past the early game this is impossible unless you want your battleship to move at the speed of smell or be the size of a small moon.

[rimbecano]

Mar 17, 2020 23:05:48 GMT -6 retsof said:

...or be the size of a small moon.

It is now obligatory for someone to say:

"That's no moon. It's a space station."

[dorn]

There are to designs from 1934 year. The AP shells are a little behind in technology, the rest is top quality at that time. The only difference is armour distribution.

As you can see AoN battleship has much better protection, may be a little overprotected. So some armour can be substituted for speed and additional guns to make ship more balance.
However what ship is better protected is up to debate.

Air attack threat:
AoN ship has much better protection in important areas (main guns, main deck) and it is probably better than having limited protection in important areas and have some protection in extended deck.

Surface action against capital ships:
It depends on lot of things however AoN ship has better protection in main areas and guns, so I would say as long as Turtle back ship stay out of range for penetrating it can be relatively good however she will probably suffer less damage that can flood ship and more damage on superstructure vs. AoN ship.

But if you look at it differently. You can decrease armour on AoN ship to 15" belt, 5.5" deck, 15" turret faces and shrunk ship to 38800 tons for 145M. Such ship is certainly not as powerful however you can save almost 40M (20 %) with ship still reasonable protected.

Another thing which I do not know is how RTW2 simulates hits that penetrated belt armour but not sloped deck as these hits will still damaged ships quite a lot. A lot of ships (even Bismarck) with such armour scheme has important systems over the citadel.

[griffin01]

All my sloped deck designs beyond 1910 use 2" BE/DE, possibly less on CL and CA. CL will almost certainly not have 2" DE, BE is usually less, too, but I generally AoN them. In preceding years I use ~5", as penetration is very poor.

Flat deck (AoN) designs should obviously have 0. However, if you use flat deck without having AoN, you should go with 2", as the only reason to do so is to save weight anyways.

dorn
I don't believe in zones of immunity, and engagements above 15k yards only serve to put on a fireworks show, unless you focus on carriers. Range should be, IMO, closed to ~11k yards for the best effect. You seem to heavily disregard the immense bonus a ship with thick sloped deck provides to protection against penetrations.

Unified narrow belt is unreliable, and, in my opinion, a waste of money and tonnage. Moreover, you waste a lot of tonnage on DE armour, which beyond splinter protection hardly serves any purpose, there isn't anything there that is worth protecting.

In my opinion, it is not exactly fair to compare your very good AoN design to the sloped deck design that seems (to me, at least) to be handicapped by questionable design choices.

But, of course, perhaps this school of design works for you.

[dorn]

Mar 18, 2020 10:10:55 GMT -6 griffin01 said:

All my sloped deck designs beyond 1910 use 2" BE/DE, possibly less on CL and CA. CL will almost certainly not have 2" DE, BE is usually less, too, but I generally AoN them. In preceding years I use ~5", as penetration is very poor.

Flat deck (AoN) designs should obviously have 0. However, if you use flat deck without having AoN, you should go with 2", as the only reason to do so is to save weight anyways.

dorn
I don't believe in zones of immunity, and engagements above 15k yards only serve to put on a fireworks show, unless you focus on carriers. Range should be, IMO, closed to ~11k yards for the best effect. You seem to heavily disregard the immense bonus a ship with thick sloped deck provides to protection against penetrations.

Unified narrow belt is unreliable, and, in my opinion, a waste of money and tonnage. Moreover, you waste a lot of tonnage on DE armour, which beyond splinter protection hardly serves any purpose, there isn't anything there that is worth protecting.

In my opinion, it is not exactly fair to compare your very good AoN design to the sloped deck design that seems (to me, at least) to be handicapped by questionable design choices.

But, of course, perhaps this school of design works for you.

It was just example to compare 2 extreme variants. I do not use this type of protection (narrow, uniform thickness, turtleback armour). But I sometimes use uniform thickness, narrow belt, flat on top of belt in case of the first battlecruisers. At this time penetration is still not so high and this allow battlecruiser have more protection against hits that can slow ship down. But usually it is getting older faster but it does not matter so much with the first battlecruisers.

[Antediluvian Monster]

I nearly always go for uniform thickness narrow belt in the pre-dread era, because mobility is weirdly important early on. Range and accuracy are so crap, and the ships so resilient, that ability to sustain advantageous firing position for long duration is a key force-multiplier. At the same time you can maneuver very agressively, I have on multiple occasions successfully used the Nelsonian tactic of sailing right in the middle of enemy batteline in order to split it into managable/overwhelmable bits.

Once you get dreadnoughts and particularly dreadnoughts with directors firepower becomes much more decisive and I roll back to spilter BE/DE.

[trifler]

I vary it some depending on what I expect the ship to go up against. If the ship won't have AON, I like to have at least 2" to guard against splinters, except for carriers, corvettes, and of course destroyers. 4" is good for immunity against AP from 3-4" guns, and will stop 5" guns in the early to mid game. The most I ever use is half of the belt thickness.