30 tons of what?

[stingray]

While awaiting the release of you know what, I decided to experiment with the ship designer, with what appears to me to be some interesting results.

Using v1.25 and starting a new 1900 game as GB with medium fleet and accepting all defalut values.

Auto generating a 500 ton DD produced the expected result. Reducing the design speed to 0kt gives values for Horsepower, Machinery weight and cost of 0, which is fine. I have a ship with no means of propulsion. Not very useful, but accurate none the less.

Doing the same with the armament however does not give the expected result. After removing the torps, guns and fire con, the designer shows a value of 30 tons for armament, at a cost of 100, but 30 tons of what exactly?

Does this 30 tons consist of hand weapons for the crew to use to repel borders, or for use in bording parties.? That's an awful lot of pistols & cutlasses.

Repeating this exercise with an auto-generated B, KE and even an AMC produced exactly the same result. They all show a value of 30 tons of armament, after having all the armament removed. Is this due to a multi legged creature lurking within the ship designer?

Even if some sort of "residual" weapon related structure is proposed to account for this weight, then surely this would scale with the size of the ship. 30 tons as a proportion of the mass of a B is nothing. But 30 tons represents (according to the figure on the ship designer) 12% of the weight of a 500t DD. Admiteddly, this is after setting the speed to zero, so there is no machinery weight. But even with normal machinery fitted, it would represent a significant proportion of the total weight of the ship.

Something else I noticed, which may possibly be related to the phantom 30 tons, is that while it is possible to reduce the design speed to 0, it is NOT possible to do the same with the Rounds per gun (RPG) value. The lowest RPG value you can have is 30. Hmmm, a coincidence perhaps? Though I cannot see why anyone would want to design a ship with a value of less than 30 rpg, I am equally unable to see any valid reason to set a hard lower limit for this value. Perhaps it has something to do with the rpg values for secondary and tertiary guns being calculated with reference to the rpg of the main guns. If this is the case, then a possible enhancement would be to allow the designer to be able to set the rpg figures for secondary, or secondary and tertiary guns during the design phase.

Any thoughts?

[Adseria]

It's not actually armament. It's just the captain's way of getting around the regulations on how much beard oil he's allowed on-board.

[nimrod]

Interesting question.

On the 30 tons of armament. I've always assumed it was a base amount for magazines / shell hoists / fire suppression system / ready ammo racks with possibly communication or warfighting gear like flags or radios along with small arms (and personnel protection) for the sailors, I mean those assigned to shore peacekeeping operations. The stuff that makes a warship a warship beyond a simple gun tube on the deck.

To rephrase, I figure it is the developers best stab at a standardized min. weight for a warship to operate as a warship with a single 2"-3" gun. The value of a min. gun (along with gear that makes a warship a warship) weight would also not be adjusted based on ship displacement or type, as it driven by the min. ship design requirements of a single 2" gun with 30 shells and whatever weight the developers deemed necessary to outfit a warship.

That the 30 tons applies to an AMC does call my assumptions into question. The AMC though I think would be much closer (or under) 10 tons for a 2" gun with min. war fighting gear / ammo.

[akd]

That’s not rephrasing; that’s saying something completely different. Your first point would require scaling for tonnage; your second doesn’t, but also doesn’t really make sense as it would be far more logical to just include that with the weight of the weapon when placed on the ship (which properly scales with the number you put on and ammo provided, etc.).

This appears to just be a bug.

[nimrod]

Feb 10, 2022 17:40:52 GMT -6 akd said:

That’s not rephrasing; that’s saying something completely different. Your first point would require scaling for tonnage; your second doesn’t, but also doesn’t really make sense as it would be far more logical to just include that with the weight of the weapon when placed on the ship (which properly scales with the number you put on and ammo provided, etc.).

This appears to just be a bug.

I apologize for the confusion... I am obtuse by nature and struggle being direct...

I was trying to make a three-fold argument in support of Stringray's question / concern.

Argument 1 was to assume the developer adopted 30 tons for the various items to make a ship a warship. Item weights may or may not need to scale - scaling depends on where they draw the requirements from; so lets assume non-scaling is legit.
 
Argument 2 (the rephrase) was to say that given argument 1. Then the min. weight given at 30 tons across the board has to be tied into a consistent element for it to be non-scaling. The only obvious element in the game is the barest min. gun requirement 2" with 30 shells, associated gun gear, and some non-necessarily scaling gear like communication equipment, etc... 

To be blunter than I want to be, a 2" pedestal mounted gun with 30 shells doesn't require a magazine / hoists / fire suppression system / etc, just ready ammo on the deck... I haven't checked but I think the 2" gun adds weight to the 30 ton weapons weight... Which, if true, further hampers the view that the min. weight is tied into a min. gun requirement. This should have got us back to argument 1, that the 30 ton weapon weight is only lightly associated with the game min. gun & ammo weight and it is really associated military gear for general operations.

Argument 3 was why the 30 ton weapons weight is a code artifact. If that number is for a warship to be a warship (associated military gear weight for general operations), then there is cause for concern (Stingray is justified brining this up); as the number is applied indiscriminately to warships and non-warships (AMC - Armed Merchant Cruiser - i.e. ship made to non-military standards). So that weight is either a simplified code applied to all ship types (working as designed but not "historically" accurate), or a bug (not working as designed such that it shouldn't exist, or that their should be scaling between classes, or some other intended option). 

[euchrejack]

Jan 30, 2022 9:27:42 GMT -6 stingray said:

Something else I noticed, which may possibly be related to the phantom 30 tons, is that while it is possible to reduce the design speed to 0, it is NOT possible to do the same with the Rounds per gun (RPG) value. The lowest RPG value you can have is 30. Hmmm, a coincidence perhaps? Though I cannot see why anyone would want to design a ship with a value of less than 30 rpg, I am equally unable to see any valid reason to set a hard lower limit for this value. Perhaps it has something to do with the rpg values for secondary and tertiary guns being calculated with reference to the rpg of the main guns. If this is the case, then a possible enhancement would be to allow the designer to be able to set the rpg figures for secondary, or secondary and tertiary guns during the design phase.

I think the 30 tons is ammo for the non-existent gun.  Which sucks, since most ammo weights a lot less than one ton per round.  But since the game doesn't have a gun to tell it how heavy to make the rounds, One Ton rounds.

Try seeing what happens when you put a 2" gun in casemate onto the vessel as its only armament.

Also check out Aircraft carriers and Seaplane carriers, as I think those are the only "legal" warships you can build unarmed.  Also check out destroyers, since they're not required to have a gun.

[brygun]

Feb 5, 2022 14:59:27 GMT -6 Adseria said:

It's not actually armament. It's just the captain's way of getting around the regulations on how much beard oil he's allowed on-board.

Binoculars.

Something learned from the saga of the Russian 2nd Pacific Fleet is the need for replacement binoclurs.