|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 28, 2019 19:20:54 GMT -6
oldpop2000 , I'm not trying to make excuses for Beatty in the slightest. I agree completely that he should have operated under the assumption that he would see action when it seems he did the opposite. I'm not of fan of Beatty as a commander or a person at all. rimbecano , I'm going to respectfully disagree with you there. I agree that Alaska didn't carry what was considered capital ship armament for its day but it was larger than their intended targets' armament and it was still overgunned for the protection it carried. Its defense was centered around protection only from 8 inch shells. So it would not have stood up well against a peer opponent armed with similar guns like the B-65 or the German P-class cruiser or O-class battlecruisers if they had been built (Yeah, the O-class would have carried full sized battleship caliber guns so that is a little unfair). I'll acknowledge that none of those ships would have handled the 12 inch/50's of the Alaska's either. SMS Blücher was armed with a uniform battery of armored cruiser sized guns (21cm or 8.3 inches) and protected from the same since they had expected Invincible carry a uniform battery of the standard British armored cruiser main armament, the 9.2 in/50 Mark X and XI. Blücher would have been in good shape defensively against HMS Minotaur or even HMS Invincible if it had only been armed with 9.2 inch guns. So in both Invincible/ Indefatigable and Alaska you have ships that were armed in excess of the ships they were designed to destroy (armored cruisers and heavy cruisers respectively) and both were armored only against the armament of their targets instead of their own guns. That means that they would have poor defense against a ship armed with similar weaponry. That's why I say they they had the same underlying philosophy of design and fundamental flaw.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 28, 2019 18:32:49 GMT -6
It's a checkbox. unless i am missing something. What sittingduck is referring to is someone in the RTW1 forum asked about what that checkbox did and Fredrik replied that it actually did nothing. It had been intended to be implemented and inadvertently been forgotten during the game's development and not realized until the question was asked. When semi Armored Piercing shells are unlocked, I don't ever use them. I also don't know if I need to be changing which ammo is shot for each gun caliber range as time goes on. I also don't know where to use SAP. I also don't know what percentages i should be using. A lot of that comes down to personal preference and how you like to fight. Personally, I will start using almost exclusively HE ammo against Battleships and for CA/CL vs. CA in a 1900 start since AP tech is so poor. Once my AP tech can start penetrating typical AI ship armors at shorter battle ranges I'll switch to AP at close range and then the same at medium range once I can penetrate there as well. For early game starts, I'll have Battleships use AP against CA at short range from the start and the same for CA vs. CL at short range. And then when I've collected a few AP techs, I'll switch to medium range AP as well. So to summarize, for short and medium range, I start with HE and switch to AP once my AP tech indicates I can start penetrating at that range. I don't switch long range to AP until after I have directors and I can hit a long enough ranges to be targeting the deck more than the belt of enemy ships. Against a peer opponent (BB vs. BB, CA vs. CA, etc) I prefer to use AP over SAP. But I will switch to using SAP against weaker opponents (BB vs. CA, CA vs. CL) as soon as I get the technology. I personally like SAP and will switch to it in any situation where my AP tech is about twice the typical armor thickness (as determined by Mr. Miller's response that aeson linked above). As far as what percentage of each type of shell to carry, you have to look at what type of opponents that caliber gun is usually used against. For example, I will use a high percentage of HE ammo in my secondary BB calibers since I expect to use my BB against other BB almost exclusively (and the occasional DD that gets too close) and using 4-6 inch gun AP against a BB belt is pointless in most circumstances. For main gun calibers, I generally assume that most of my fighting will be against a peer opponent so whatever type of shell I've set for that that will be roughly 65-80% of my loadout with some left over for taking on smaller opponents if I'm using a different type against them. Hopefully that makes sense. And for reference, if you weren't aware, small/medium/long range is always just the gun's current maximum range divided into equal thirds. So for a gun with a 12,000 yard max range short is 0-4K, medium is 4-8k and long range is 8-12k.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 28, 2019 18:20:55 GMT -6
Andrew Gordon's Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command discusses the decisions made at Jutland in a good bit of detail. He surmised that 5th Battle Squadron's positioning at the beginning of the battle was indicative of Beatty not expecting to actually find the Germans (there had been many previous sorties with no contact because the Germans had returned to port) and so they were positioned to simplify the transfer of 5BS back to the Grand Fleet when Jellicoe and the Grand Fleet arrived at the rendezvous point with 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron returning to the Battlecruiser force following their gunnery practice at Scapa Flow. And of course, Evan-Thomas had no idea of Beatty's expectations of initiative because they didn't bother to speak to each other after 5BS arrived at Rosyth.
It's a fascinating book, I highly recommend it.
Getting back to the battlecruisers, D. K. Brown provides some criticism for the early dreadnought armored cruiser designs (prior to November 1911 when the term battlecruiser came into use), particularly Indefatigable. Indefatigable was only slightly more capable than the preceding Invincible-class.
I think that is the fundamental flaw of the Anglo dreadnought armored cruiser concept pre-Lion. There was zero consideration for what happens when Germany (or the USA) builds their own large, battleship-caliber armored cruisers. That's not to say that he thinks the German built better ships, on the contrary. If you remove the three battlecruisers that were lost due to abysmal powder handling practices and the removal of flash tight safety doors, and you take into account how badly flawed the British armor piercing shells were, the British ships generally held up better under fire than the German ones did. Of course the Germans can always point to the final tally of ships and men lost.
I also don't think that the flawed thinking behind the Invincible and Indefatigable-classes is restricted to just the British Admiralty. You could make the very same accusation about the Alaska-class large cruisers which are very similar in concept to Invincible and Indefatigable.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 21, 2019 9:37:47 GMT -6
Except for the shells they used I find hidden flaws to be a trope rather than having anything to do with actual problems. The German better training was only compared to the battle cruiser fleet run by a incompetent, didn't have a training advantage against the DN fleet. And the British made a conscious choice to keep ammo hoist doors open, or to remove safety features to increase their fire rate. The loss of the BCs at Jutland was do to these decisions and not listening to Fisher who labeled the BCs large armoured cruisers. But, they also brought armoured cruisers to a dreadnaught fight. It wasn't just Beatty and the battlecruiser fleet. After the battle of Dogger Bank, Adm. Jellicoe issued a gunnery order pressing for a higher rate of fire and for commencing fire earlier in the battle. Instructions had to be issued to both fleets (Grand and Battlecruiser) post Jutland that any ship which had removed their flash tight doors should replace them at once. [Source - Norman Friedman's The British Battleship 1906-1946] So both Beatty and Jellicoe are equally culpable for allowing the poor practices to occur. I'm not sure if this was the point you were trying to make or not but if you were making the argument that the problem wasn't the British designs, it was the practices of the sailors in the ships then I entirely agree with you. The captain of HMS Lion (Captain Chatfield) refused to relax magazine regulations and Lion survived a flash fire in one of its turrets during Jutland. This is actually represented in game as well. The increased risk of flash fire caused by the Hidden Flaws trait is associated with the operating nation (UK in an unmodded game since I think they are the only nation with the trait) not the building nation. So a British built ship being operated by a foreign navy effectively doesn't have the Hidden Flaws trait where as a foreign built ship being operated by the Royal Navy would be as susceptible to the problems of the Hidden Flaws traits as a home built one. The tidbits file cut and pasted Fredriks quotes so I'm not sure if this is from one post or two but they are related so I will put them together. I missed the second part when I quoted it in my previous post.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 17, 2019 18:08:51 GMT -6
Hidden Flaws also affects the nation's shells. Here is the quote from Fredrik from the Tidbits file for RTW1. No reason to think this was changed for RTW2 although of course that is possible. The flash fires associated with the hidden flaws trait goes away as the UK suffers magazine explosions. It simulates their navy investigating and applying their lessons learned and quit stacking their powder cases throughout the turret. It does say that the learning function is specific to flash fires so I don't know if the increased dud rate and poor AP shell performance goes away over time but since the British fixed that historically* as well I would hope so. The developers would have to confirm one way or another though. * 15 inch APC Mark IIIa 4crh 'Greenboy' shell
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 10, 2019 8:20:24 GMT -6
For some reason sometimes after I rebuild a ship, I can build that model of rebuild. But for some other rebuilds they don't appear in the list to build and I have to build the original model and then rebuild it once it is complete. Is there a reason as to why sometimes you can build the new rebuild or not? I created a new USA 1920 start game (ver. 1.07) with no treaties active including Versaille and opened the rebuild menu for a 1915 battleship. Rebuilt the machinery, raised the speed one knot and reduced the turret armor by .5 inches to compensate for the added weight and added Improved director fire control. It allowed me to save the design and rebuild that particular ship but I couldn't build any new construction ships to that (R 1920) design. It doesn't even show up in the menu as an available class with or without the check mark for old designs. I verified the refit design ship file exists in the gamesave folder and the game will allow me to rebuild other original ships of the same class to the refit design I just can't build new construction of that refit design. So I think I verified what you are describing. [Edit - I think it's the design development mechanic that was implemented for RTW2. It's possible that it inadvertently wasn't setup to accommodate refit designs as new construction or there was some conflict that the developers didn't have the time to work out so they removed the ability to create new construction from a refit design. Or if the problem is intermittent (because it hasn't been for me yet) then it might still be a bug.]
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 7, 2019 7:25:33 GMT -6
On the technology page, I've added a description for what each of the columns (e.g. 1900, Y, 100, 4) in the research areas file signifies.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 7, 2019 6:21:13 GMT -6
Thanks for the explanation. Is there any message that tells you when a tech is skipped? No. If you get a "baffled by", "dead-end" or "close to mastering" event it will tell you what tech you are actually researching and if you are familiar with the tech tree you could figure it out that way but in general, you figure it out either when you know you've gone well past where you expected to research something (either by the game year or by notices that other nations have completed the tech) or when you complete a research item farther down the tree that you weren't expected. For example, if it's 1907 and I haven't researched 700 ton DD's (a 1906 tech) then it's pretty certain that I've skipped that tech since there is a big gap time-wise between 600 ton DD (1901) and 700 ton DD (1906). It can be frustrating but it makes the research system much more interesting than the one in say the Civilization series where you know exactly what order everything is going to be researched in. If it gets to the point where it's really annoying you, you can use a text editor to look at the research area in the gamesave file after you have saved the game following completing a research tech. The gamesave file has an entry for each research area telling you what level tech you are actually researching at that time.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 7, 2019 0:00:10 GMT -6
You can make the forward and aft main gun turrets casemates by making the number of guns per mount 0. I wouldn't do it from a game play perspective but if you are just trying recreate a Confederate ironclad in-game that would be closer to historical.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 6, 2019 19:19:43 GMT -6
They didn't forget about it but because of the semi-random nature of the name assigning system added to the fact that you don't know how many ships the AI is going to build before starting its first dreadnought the odds are good that the name Dreadnought (if it was on the list) isn't going to be the first actual dreadnought or even used on a dreadnought at all. Since the game uses dreadnought as a type (as seen in the ship picture screen), I wouldn't say it might be confusing because the player would realise what was going on but it wouldn't look "right".
So, and I'm assuming here, I don't know that this has been confirmed by the developers, they just left that particular name off of the list. UK players can always custom name their ship Dreadnought if they want to. I will actually go and modify the first UK AI dreadnought class name to one has the same feel to it (So I might change it to Dreadnought, Albion or Monarch instead of Collingwood or Barfleur for example because I can't picture a historian saying "and the American battleline would soon entirely consist of collingwoods..." It just doesn't roll off of the tongue the way dreadnoughts does.)
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Aug 6, 2019 18:58:14 GMT -6
I a trying to understand how technology advancement works. If your scientists are baffled by a specific technology, what happens? Does that tech get skipped? If a technology gets skipped, do you get the effects at the next tech level? For example, if a tech that gives you 1% weigh reduction gets shipped, and the next one is also a 1% weight reduction, do you get a total of 1% or 2%? If the "baffled by" or "hit a dead end" events fire you lose a portion of the research points already collected in that research area. So effectively you are set back by a number of turns but you continue to research that tech. If you skip a tech you don't get it when the next advancement is reached unless it's superseded by the next tech like 3-centerline turrets, 4-centerline turrets and 5(+)-centerline turrets. If you skipped three and researched four obviously you could design a ship with only three centerline turrets if you wanted to. There is a chance after every subsequent tech researched in that area that you will go back and research a previously skipped tech so most of the techs will eventually be researched by the end of the game. There is always the chance that another nation will sell it to you or you could steal it as well.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Jun 12, 2019 18:53:16 GMT -6
Most of the period leading up to the game's time frame and until the Washington Naval Arms Limitation treaty the British were at the forefront of naval artillery design. Here's an interesting article on Navweaps that talks about why they had some unusual, non-integer calibers (e.g. 7.5 and 9.2 inches). It came down to shell weight. When they designed a bigger gun they wanted it to throw a shell roughly twice as large as the previous gun. Up until the 20th century at least when the difference was closer to 1.5 times the previous gun's shell weight. The 16 inch guns on Nelson were an exception because they were specifically designed for "lower" weight, higher velocity. To follow on to the data provided in the article, the 18 inch/40 Mark 1 (HMS Furious) fired an AP shell that was 3,320 lbs, a little over 1.7 times the weight of the AP shell fired by the 15 inch/42 Mark 1 ( Queen Elizabeth through Hood-classes, Vanguard). I don't know if other nations had a similar philosophy or not but I suspect that they were mostly reacting to or trying to one-up the British which is why you usually see a roughly 2 inch caliber increase in generations of capital ship artillery. I'm aware this is just a general rule and that there are a number of individual exceptions.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Jun 11, 2019 16:13:55 GMT -6
Armstrong developed a 14 inch gun for foreign sales that they unsuccessfully tried to sell to the Royal Navy as well. They did serve on HMS Canada when it was taken over by the British for WW1. They also had the 16 inch guns on G3/ Nelson and the 14 inch guns on King George V but the latter was due to treaty limits. Add in the 18 inch guns developed for Furious and another 18 inch design planned for N3 and the British hit every caliber except 17 inches. (Well, practical calibers anyway. Not the nutty 19 or 20 inch concepts considered for the German and Japanese future designs) I agree it's probably better to just roll with it.
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Jun 11, 2019 12:03:44 GMT -6
AFAIK based on RTW1 and RTW2 there is no tech 'tree' but it seems like all techs have a cost associated with them. And as you allocate research to them your team generates 'research points' Low tier techs like 600 ton DD have a low threshold. Others have a much higher. However, it seems like when you reach this threshold it's not an automatic unlock. You have have the points to get the tech but there is a RNG chance each turn that the tech will fire once you have 'paid for it' That can lead to weird things like getting 15 inch guns before 14 inch guns. Or getting 4 centerline turrets before 3. Or my personal annoyance, being able to superimpose aft turrets and NEVER being able to do it for forward turrets the entire game. It seems like if you put tech on 100% speed there is less overall weirdness. In RTW1 if I wanted a very slow game I would put tech speed at 60% and all kinds of general silliness would occur. I have not played enough RTW2 yet to see if this is still true. So the long answer to your question is, I think you got unlucky. Also note that most of what I said above is a guess ans is only my personal experiences. I may have the behind the scenes coding completely wrong and they have an entirely different system from what I have explained. It just seems from my games played that what I described seems to be how it ends up playing out. ddg and I spent a bit of time studying how the research system worked in RTW1 and it doesn't appear to be much different, except for the listed changes in the manual, in RTW2. Each technology has a nominal year for its discovery; a Y or N; a percent chance of being researched initially when the previous research is finished; a cost in RP; a tech number used to assign bonus techs to various nations and a basic description. It will look like this in the ResearchAreas.DAT file: Torpedo protection I;1906;N;80;6;403;Enables Torpedo protection I on ships Researching a technology prior to the year listed for the tech results in the RP accumulation rate for that tech being throttled until the tech is researched or the game year reaches the nominal year for the tech. This keeps large budget nations from running away technology wise from the smaller budget nations (No tanks vs. spearmen a la the Civilization series). Note, there is some randomness built into the amount of RP accumulated each turn per area so the amount of RP gained in an area each month can be more or less than expected just based on the game year. The Y/N represents how likely other nations are to be able to research an item once it is completed by one nation. For example, Once any nation researches triple turrets (a Y tech) and everyone else sees that it is feasible it increases the chance that those other nations will research it as well when they get to it on the tech tree. The next number is the percent chance (80% for the TPS 1 example above) that that tech will be researched when the previous tech is completed. This introduces an element of randomness to the game. If a technology is skipped initially, the game will go back and check to see if the technology will be researched later after the next technology in that area is researched (or you could end up stealing it or buying it from another nation) so usually unless it's a late game tech you will eventually research it so it's not a one-and-done chance. In RTW1, the next number was the amount of RP (multiplied by 20,000) that was needed to complete the research. I haven't specifically checked that it's still 20,000 in RTW2. Once you reach that threshold the tech is always completed. The last number is the Tech ID number used to assign it as a bonus tech in the BNat.dat file for various nations. Some sequential techs like the number of centerline turrets or torpedo protection systems effectively complete the previous one if the previous one was initially skipped. I don't think I've ever researched gun calibers out of order though. But I don't know that that is impossible. I have bought a gun caliber from another nation though prior to researching the smaller caliber. (14 inch guns from the UK prior to researching 13 inch guns myself)
|
|
|
Post by bcoopactual on Jun 8, 2019 9:23:34 GMT -6
This was well known by the time the first superfiring turrets were included in designs of the time. Superfiring turrets were arranged in a way such that the muzzle blast created by the turret's guns would happen past the inferior's turret roof, to avoid the worst of the effects impacting it. As a result we see, without exception, superfiring turrets which guns go over the preceding turret's roof, and which muzzles end roughly at the same point where the preceding turret's roof ends - that way when those guns fire the muzzle blast is produced almost entirely beyond the inferior turret's roof, avoiding "hammering the bell". There are actually a few exceptions. The following classes of battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers have superfiring turrets whose upper turret's gun muzzles are roughly closer, or as close, to the center of the lower turret's roof as they are to the forward edge: Iowa, South Dakota (1939), North Carolina, Alaska, Baltimore, Cleveland, Wichita, Brooklyn, Atlanta, St. Louis, Worcester, Juneau, Portland, New Orleans, Pensacola, Northampton, King George V (1939), Nelson, Queen Elizabeth, Royal Sovereign, Repulse, Hood, York, County, Town, Dido, Crown Colony, Arethusa, Leander, Conte di Cavour, Littorio, Andrea Doria, Trieste, Montecuccoli, Luigi Cadorna, Garibaldi, Richelieu, Dunkerque, Duquesne, Suffren, La Galissonniere, Duguay Trouin, Primaguet, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Nurnberg, Yamato and Kongo. The two actual superfiring turrets (Nos 3 & 4) don't have gun muzzles that reach the forward edge of the No. 2 or No. 5 turret. Why are they then allowed to fire over the beam? Or do you have proof they are not?I'm not even entertaining discussion of Nelson. 16 inch guns are on the extreme end of muzzle energy and blast pressure and far beyond the scope when talking about 5 inch and 6 inch gunned cruisers. Again, this is trying to take the situation to an extreme. But I will point out that that incident was actually an accident and the guns weren't supposed to fire when they did according to your own source. The powder in the left gun of No. 2 turret (closest to No. 1 turret since they were trained to starboard) started smoldering while loading. They apparently just got the breach closed when the gun when off inadvertently. So the gun would have been at the loading angle of +5 degrees which is probably quite a bit lower than the planned firing elevation. So it was an accident and not typical of normal firing procedures. British experience with early dreadnought turrets (and battlecruisers, they used variation of the same turret) is irrelevant. Not just because of the open sighting hoods on the turret roofs. The turrets in general were noted as being poorly protected. To quote the navweaps page:
"7b. Battle experience showed that British turrets in general were inadequately protected, especially on these early 12" (30.5 cm) models. Problems included the lack of gunport shields, which meant that splinters and blast could easily penetrate into the working areas. There were also large gaps between the base of the gunhouse and the top of the barbette, leaving an area of reduced protection. The sighting ports on top of the turrets were of an open design, which allowed both gunsmoke and sea spray to enter into the gunhouse as well as causing considerable discomfit to the crewmembers whose job it was to peer through these ports at the target. These sighting ports and the turret rangefinders also projected up above the turret roof, which unintentionally turned them into deadly shell traps. Finally, the sloping front roof of these turrets meant that the angle of incidence for incoming shells was less than that for a flat roof, which increased the chance of a penetrating hit."
American turrets were designed with superfiring in mind, British ones at the time were not.
|
|