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Post by thecarthaginian on Sept 2, 2015 3:01:48 GMT -6
In USA press in 1906 appeared article where was mentioned "new Russian battleship project" with 4 12 in guns in casemates View Attachmentalso there is a photo of nearly the same ship model View Attachment so casemated 12 in guns considered possible in that time. Possible, but the drawing is not too detailed. There is the poasibility that the guns had nothing more than chain hoists and manpower. They might have had power assists and required single-position loading. Designs in the 1880-1900 period were often a bit odd and not always remotely successful.
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krawa
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Post by krawa on Sept 2, 2015 3:23:42 GMT -6
In USA press in 1906 appeared article where was mentioned "new Russian battleship project" with 4 12 in guns in casemates also there is a photo of nearly the same ship model so casemated 12 in guns considered possible in that time. Very interesting, never seen that before.
Had it some real Background or was it just wild speculation by the press?
There is a difference between something being possible und realistically useable.
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Post by jdkbph on Sept 2, 2015 3:38:36 GMT -6
No one is saying it's impossible. What I'm saying is that it's totally impractical. Of the previous two "examples" - Swiftsure (nee, Constitucion) and the interesting design posted here above this reply - the former quite likely represents the maximum practical limit for manually operated and serviced casemate mounted secondaries (the design itself was obviously unsuccessful and not repeated), and the latter, or anything like it, was never built. I'm guessing there was a good reason for that as well.
Seriously. I know this is an interesting intellectual exercise... but does anyone here actually believe that 14 x 11" casemate mounted guns on 20k ton displacement is at all feasible?
And even if you do believe it is practical and desirable to build such ships, should there not be reasonable "penalties" applied... eg, significant reductions in speed (due to weight distributed to guns, ammo handling and related protection rather than propulsion), as well as increased crew requirements (and thereby decreased range) to service them?
JD
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Post by tmp on Sept 2, 2015 7:37:55 GMT -6
And even if you do believe it is practical and desirable to build such ships, should there not be reasonable "penalties" applied... eg, significant reductions in speed (due to weight distributed to guns, ammo handling and related protection rather than propulsion), as well as increased crew requirements (and thereby decreased range) to service them? As pointed out there already are considerable "penalties" that come with this design.
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Post by thecarthaginian on Sept 2, 2015 8:17:42 GMT -6
And even if you do believe it is practical and desirable to build such ships, should there not be reasonable "penalties" applied... eg, significant reductions in speed (due to weight distributed to guns, ammo handling and related protection rather than propulsion), as well as increased crew requirements (and thereby decreased range) to service them? As pointed out there already are considerable "penalties" that come with this design. How 'considerable' are those penalties? The modern armored gunhouse on a barbette manages to achieve a high rate of fire because everything associated with the gun remains oriented along the axis of loading - hoists, rammers, etc. This is not the situation with a casemate mount aboard a ship. This is a 9" casemate breech-loader in 1884. As you can see, it differs in virtually no way from the medium-caliber setup I pictured above... well, except for scale. Shells were hoisted from the magazine, placed into cradles that were suspended from the overhead on chains and ran along the visible tracks. These were positioned behind the breech of the gun (with fine adjustment provided by muscle alone), and rammed by hand - due to the method of traverse for the gun, the rammer had to be mobile. The process could then be repeated with the powder. Finally, the aim was adjusted, and the gun fired. It was a labor intensive process which amounted to a ballet performed by a dozen men centered around several hundred kilos of steel and high explosive. Some ironclads of the period were said to have gotten off shots in approximately 70 seconds a gun similar to this - while ammunition and powder were close at hand and the crew was absolutely fresh. Hauling them around during battle would be a far more labor-intensive enterprise that would doubtlessly have an adverse effect on rate of fire. For comparison, 9" guns of the late 1880's/early 1890's in barbette mounts had a RoF of about 2 rounds/minute. Additionally, the casemates seldom had range equal to the main battery guns. Do our ships face similar penalties for their casemate mounts?
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krawa
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Post by krawa on Sept 2, 2015 8:21:30 GMT -6
And even if you do believe it is practical and desirable to build such ships, should there not be reasonable "penalties" applied... eg, significant reductions in speed (due to weight distributed to guns, ammo handling and related protection rather than propulsion), as well as increased crew requirements (and thereby decreased range) to service them? As pointed out there already are considerable "penalties" that come with this design. No, there are no penalties that specifically deal with oversized casemate guns beside the Flash fire risk. Everything else is Independent of the gun caliber.
What's necessary to realistically reflect the drawbacks of those mounts is a much bigger inherent ROF Penalty (~-50-80% depending on actual gun-size) and a weight Penalty per mounted gun to reflect the additional Crew to man the guns.
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Post by tmp on Sept 2, 2015 9:24:30 GMT -6
No, there are no penalties that specifically deal with oversized casemate guns beside the Flash fire risk. Everything else is Independent of the gun caliber.
What's necessary to realistically reflect the drawbacks of those mounts is a much bigger inherent ROF Penalty (~-50-80% depending on actual gun-size) and a weight Penalty per mounted gun to reflect the additional Crew to man the guns.
I quite disagree; it's imo enough of a penalty that these guns are easier to take out and as such pose much less of an actual threat. That combined with the risk of flash fire which, again, is more likely to happen than with the same guns mounted in the turrets, due to typical lack of protection. The degree of penalties that you suggest here, you may as well ask to prohibit these guns outright, because that's the effective intent behind them -- to make it completely unviable and as such not really an option to consider. 80% RoF penaly would mean 10 such guns would be (inferior) equivalent of single wing turret on each side of the ship, and they *already* would weight ~3.5x as much with comparable armour as these two turrets, even without any extra weight penalty you want to drop on top of them.
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Post by tmp on Sept 2, 2015 9:48:37 GMT -6
This is a 9" casemate breech-loader in 1884. As you can see, it differs in virtually no way from the medium-caliber setup I pictured above... well, except for scale. (..) For comparison, 9" guns of the late 1880's/early 1890's in barbette mounts had a RoF of about 2 rounds/minute. For perspective, this is a picture of 16" gun from the same era: It had rate of fire of ~1 shot every 6 minutes or so. Now fast forward to 1920 and the guns of the same caliber are firing at the rate of 1.5 shot/minute. The point here being, the nature and performance of technology used 15 years before the game even begins has little relevance on the period it covers. Yes, in 1884 the 9" guns in casemates were loaded manually. But why do you conclude from this that there would be no technical improvements whatsoever in this area, similar to advancements made with the turret-fitted guns, if it was decided that having heavy guns in casemates was a way to go?
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krawa
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Post by krawa on Sept 2, 2015 10:18:51 GMT -6
No, there are no penalties that specifically deal with oversized casemate guns beside the Flash fire risk. Everything else is Independent of the gun caliber.
What's necessary to realistically reflect the drawbacks of those mounts is a much bigger inherent ROF Penalty (~-50-80% depending on actual gun-size) and a weight Penalty per mounted gun to reflect the additional Crew to man the guns.
I quite disagree; it's imo enough of a penalty that these guns are easier to take out and as such pose much less of an actual threat. That combined with the risk of flash fire which, again, is more likely to happen than with the same guns mounted in the turrets, due to typical lack of protection. The degree of penalties that you suggest here, you may as well ask to prohibit these guns outright, because that's the effective intent behind them -- to make it completely unviable and as such not really an option to consider. 80% RoF penaly would mean 10 such guns would be (inferior) equivalent of single wing turret on each side of the ship, and they *already* would weight ~3.5x as much with comparable armour as these two turrets, even without any extra weight penalty you want to drop on top of them. First,
These guns are only easy to take out if you neglect armor, if you put the same amount of armor on them as if they were Primary guns the only disadvantage is slightly worse accuracy.
Regarding ROF, as far as I know RTW is striving to model naval battles of the beginning 20th century as accurately as possible for its engine. jdkbph and thecarthaginian pointed out quite convincingly what Problems you face if you try to manually load a 100-400kg Shell (8-12" gun) on a rolling and pitching ship and I made a Suggestion what Needs to be changed to reflect this and make RTW more realistic. Making RTW even better (=more realistic) is all I care about in this case, and if that means a certain designs become unviable - so be it...
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krawa
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Post by krawa on Sept 2, 2015 10:59:44 GMT -6
This is a 9" casemate breech-loader in 1884. As you can see, it differs in virtually no way from the medium-caliber setup I pictured above... well, except for scale. (..) For comparison, 9" guns of the late 1880's/early 1890's in barbette mounts had a RoF of about 2 rounds/minute. The point here being, the nature and performance of technology used 15 years before the game even begins has little relevance on the period it covers. Yes, in 1884 the 9" guns in casemates were loaded manually. But why do you conclude from this that there would be no technical improvements whatsoever in this area, similar to advancements made with the turret-fitted guns, if it was decided that having heavy guns in casemates was a way to go? I repeat the crucial part of carthaginians post:
"The modern armored gunhouse (aka Turret) on a barbette manages to achieve a high rate of fire because everything associated with the gun remains oriented along the axis of loading - hoists, rammers, etc. This is not the situation with a casemate mount aboard a ship."
The Point is that casemates do not benefit from better hoists and rammers as they are manually loaded and it doesn't matter how fast the hoist can get a new shell from the magazine if the crew cannot keep up with getting that shell into the gun...
Of course you can install an automatic rammer, but then you have a fixed loading Position for the gun; after each shot the gun has to be trained to Center Position, loaded, fired and trained back. To me that still sounds like a ROF Penalty compared to a turret Mount.
And if you turn hoist and rammer together with the gun to avoid any delays? Then you have a turret...
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Post by gornik on Sept 2, 2015 12:30:56 GMT -6
In USA press in 1906 appeared article where was mentioned "new Russian battleship project" with 4 12 in guns in casemates also there is a photo of nearly the same ship model so casemated 12 in guns considered possible in that time. Very interesting, never seen that before.
Had it some real Background or was it just wild speculation by the press?
There is a difference between something being possible und realistically useable. Unfortunately, there are not many information about alternative Russian battleship projects of that time. Seem that such ship would be really proposed, and even got some attention, but there was much better project of BB and Russian navy anyway had no money to build new battleships that year.
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Post by tmp on Sept 2, 2015 12:47:28 GMT -6
First,
These guns are only easy to take out if you neglect armor, if you put the same amount of armor on them as if they were Primary guns the only disadvantage is slightly worse accuracy.
Regarding ROF, as far as I know RTW is striving to model naval battles of the beginning 20th century as accurately as possible for its engine. jdkbph and thecarthaginian pointed out quite convincingly what Problems you face if you try to manually load a 100-400kg Shell (8-12" gun) on a rolling and pitching ship and I made a Suggestion what Needs to be changed to reflect this and make RTW more realistic. Making RTW even better (=more realistic) is all I care about in this case, and if that means a certain designs become unviable - so be it...
If you do put equal armour on these guns you at best wind up with half of firepower of centerline turret, for the same weight. That's already huge penalty, imo. A case might be made that such guns will have performance comparable with primary guns in wing turrets, but then guess what? You can use turret mountings instead of casemates for the secondary guns too with minimal research, and not only this will lead to weight savings together with advantage of better fire angles compared to the casemates and no weather RoF penalty, it makes the entire argument of "but manual loading, should penalize that into the ground!" fall apart. Or you know, why not one-up it. This is perfectly legit design in the game, too, with the same speed and displacement of the thing that started it all, and similar armour as far as I can guess (extended bits were traded for guns, but it's nowhere near optimized) So the question becomes -- if the OP faces the same ship with 4x12's and 14- sorry, 16x11's, but the 11's will be instead packed in turrets because AI will select different wrapping option from the drop down menu, will that make them complain any less how this design is ahistorical and omg we're all gonna die as soon as it shows up? Or will the goal posts get moved, and next point of contention will be how unrealistic it is to have such heavy secondary batteries, and what obstacles need to be invented to prevent such design at all..?
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Post by baggers on Sept 2, 2015 13:47:45 GMT -6
Of course you can install an automatic rammer, but then you have a fixed loading Position for the gun; after each shot the gun has to be trained to Center Position, loaded, fired and trained back. To me that still sounds like a ROF Penalty compared to a turret Mount.
And if you turn hoist and rammer together with the gun to avoid any delays? Then you have a turret...
Note that even a gun in a turret can have a "loading position" in vertical axis, and go back in the "loading position" each time for reloading, to align with rammer and powder feeding. The reloading position for heavy 16" gun was 5 degrees, for that matter. Even with a rammer, very heavy shells loads better this way ^^. youtu.be/Dg-cNmLRgiU?t=309 About rate of fire, turreted "moderns" mounts for heavy guns can't reach very high ones:
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Post by baggers on Sept 2, 2015 18:28:25 GMT -6
Note: when having a big gun in turret allow for good elevations possibilities (at least with "increased elevation" options ^^), the casemate impair more this. So it impair the maximum range of that gun. I just try that in design editor, and after looking at "gun data" from casemated Vs turreted main guns, it seem it was not taken into account. (Max ranges and other values doesn't change in the ship designer no matter if the gun was turreted or casemated) Maybe we could suggest to RTW team to take into account, if not already done, the reduced range of the reduced elevation of casemated guns (both main and secondaries), as this is a major disadvantage for heavy casemateds guns? Casemated guns can benefit too for "increased elevation" for extra range modernizations, but not as much as turreteds ones:
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Post by thecarthaginian on Sept 2, 2015 22:37:44 GMT -6
This is a 9" casemate breech-loader in 1884. As you can see, it differs in virtually no way from the medium-caliber setup I pictured above... well, except for scale. (..) For comparison, 9" guns of the late 1880's/early 1890's in barbette mounts had a RoF of about 2 rounds/minute. The point here being, the nature and performance of technology used 15 years before the game even begins has little relevance on the period it covers. Yes, in 1884 the 9" guns in casemates were loaded manually. But why do you conclude from this that there would be no technical improvements whatsoever in this area, similar to advancements made with the turret-fitted guns, if it was decided that having heavy guns in casemates was a way to go? The point here being the technology behind casemated mounts had not changed in those 15 years.
A gun in a casemated mount had been loaded in a near-identical manner from the invention of the center-pivot casemate to the end of that type of weapon mount being used on new-build ships in the 1920's - hell, the only thing that really changed was the end of the gun you loaded the shell into! This means that a comparison between casemate mounts is apples-to-apples... even if we're comparing red delicious and granny smiths. To the contrary, barbette mount guns (including later guns in armored gunhouses) developed all-around loading, any-angle loading, rotating trunks, and power-assist ramming. This means that using a barbette mount from the 1880's and one from the 1900s is essentially comparing oranges to bananas.
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