weight distribution on ships more specificaly battleships

[imryn]

You are all right in what you say about my ability to conduct definitive tests. It isn't possible for all the factors you have suggested. What I did was build comparable ships with the two armour schemes and sail them in the same battles and then compare the logs at the end to see how many hits penetrated the belt. I realise this is a pretty vague way of testing, however I couldn't find any sign that "sloped deck" armoured ships sustained fewer penetrating hits than "Flat deck on Belt".

I fully agree that my proposed solution / implementation is not precisely accurate. I was attempting to propose a solution that captured the "feel" of the armour scheme without it being too complicated. I don't think the game has the complexity in the physics engine to do it absolutely right. My suggestion could be adjusted to make it a closer emulation (adding 2/3 of deck to belt, or 1/2, etc).

I know what the manual says about Belt and sloping deck armour. "Turtleback" armour is not the standard WW1 armour configuration, and the ships that used it were built after 1925 and so were completely out of scope for RTW1. I see no reason to assume that "Belt and sloping deck" armour is supposed to replicate the performance of "Turtleback" armour. It was a refinement of that armour and had much better performance against vertical hits than any other armour scheme.

I agree that the battle I described is entirely ahistorical (good word!) however, as I stated, I am playing the game as it was designed and not trying to use it to create a historically accurate battle. There are games available that strive for precise historical accuracy but RTW is not one of them. RTW is, to me anyway, a game of "what if".

Historically things went the way they did because of a complex weave of factors, and many of them are either not present in RTW or are within our control to manipulate. This means we can manipulate the context that our wars and battles take place in. With RTW2 we can take that manipulation forward into the age of airpower, but we don't have to let things develop in the same sequence they did in real life. As I have said before, there will be mods that allow us to remove airpower from RTW2, but even without such drastic measures we can still change things:

"What if" development of AA defenses was far more advanced than airpower?
"What if" the US carriers were in port and the battleships were at sea?
"What if" The people who argued for airpower vs battleships lost the debate?
"What if" There was no Washington treaty?
"What if" Germany's economy wasn't destroyed by WW1?
"What if" Bismark had commissioned in 1929 not 39?

I could go on and on - in fact I have already have haven't I. I find it very easy to imagine a context where airpower doesn't achieve total superiority over the battleship in the WW2 time period, and where the battleship continued to be developed as the primary source of naval power. A context where air defenses were easily capable of shooting down less capable attacking aircraft; where naval air power was relegated to a scout and reconnaissance role. It would be easy enough to create the context I am describing by tweaking the research file to ensure that AA defense technology stays well ahead of airpower technology.

So there is a way of playing RTW2 in a fashion that will still be "Battleship-centric" and keep my inner 12 year old happy. In that context I believe that the compromises inherent in "Flat deck on belt" armour will turn out to be less acceptable than they were in the real world, and the apex predator battleship would be a ship developed along "All or Nothing" principals with a "Turtleback" armour scheme.

And before someone jumps in to say "Flat deck on belt" armour wasn't a compromise. please don't. Every armour scheme is a compromise created by balancing a whole bunch of different factors. In the case of "Flat deck on belt" as implemented by the USN in their later battleships protection was sacrificed to allow for greater speed, offensive power was sacrificed to allow for a shorter citadel, and vertical protection was sacrificed in favour of horizontal protection. In the real world these compromises were good choices, but in the context we can create in RTW they might not be - it is up to each of us to decide how we want to manipulate the context.

[imryn]

I have found a very detailed description and comparison of Bismarks armour at www.combinedfleet.com It is a weighty read but here are a few excerpts:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"While the armor protection scheme of the BISMARCK is similar to its contemporaries in most respects, as indicated above, the amidships hull armor scheme protecting the ship's "vitals" - magazines, boilers, engine rooms, electrical generator rooms, power and communication switchboards, gun plot rooms (for range-keeping electro-mechanical computers and stable elements/gyroscopes), and so forth - was definitely unique to German warships in WWII. This portion of an armored warship is generally termed the "Citadel" because it represents the 'core' of the armored "castle" in the hull. This armor scheme was a "beefed-up" version of the scheme used before and during WWI by German and many foreign battleships, which was abandoned by every other nation except Germany immediately after the last ships designed before or during that war were finished (note the enormous change between the HMS HOOD, which was the last WWI-type battleship/battle-cruiser built by Britain, and the HMS NELSON and HMS RODNEY, which were designed just after that war as HOOD-sized "modern" battleships, but later reduced in size and speed because of the restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922). Germany seems to have been the most reactionary of all nations in its large warship designs, which is strange after it had built the very radical and advanced "Pocket Battleships" of the DEUTSCHLAND (later LUTZOW) Class in the late 1920's and early 1930's."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author clearly states that the "Turtleback" armour scheme is unique to German ships of WW2 vintage. So it is definitely NOT the same as general WW1 era pre-AoN designs.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"FINAL CONCLUSION: The BISMARCK's internal vitals could not be directly reached through the side belt armor under any normal circumstances due to the sloped "turtle-back" armored deck design, making its design the best of all given in this article for this purpose. However, there are several costs for this:

(1) Due to the main armored deck's low position in the ship, extensive flooding of the ship above the sloped/flat armored deck is likely if the side armor is holed, which could cause serious stability problems and which reduced protected reserve bouyancy by one complete deck

(2) The upper hull area can be destroyed at much longer ranges than any other design due to the weak side belt armor. Furthermore, some important equipment, cables, etc. were in this region, compromising the effectiveness of the protection to some (possibly critical) extent

(3) The weak lower main deck armor design -- especially the close-range zone of vulnerability after the projectile penetrated the 1.97" weather deck and was deflected downward through the thin 3.15" main armor deck over the amidships region -- allowed the possibility of reaching the vitals by hits that were deflected off of other structures, such as barbettes, or which hit "shot traps" where ricochet was inhibited (such as where a solid object was bolted to the armor deck and the projectile hit the joint, requiring the projectile to lift the solid object up or to punch through it in order to ricochet)

(4) The requirement for a rather heavy upper side hull armor belt to protect the thin main armor deck from side hits above the main armor belt, which costs considerable weight that could be used to beef up the deck armor or belt armor or both

(5) Unlike the USS SOUTH DAKOTA (and USS IOWA) or the VITTORIO VENETO, the BISMARCK's side armor does not ensure that a completely penetrating projectile is virtually always shattered and rendered "ineffective" by being decapped prior to hitting the face hardened belt armor, which reduces the damage that the projectile will usually case even if it does not penetrate through the belt

(6) The armored transverse bulkheads at each end of the Citadel were weakly protected and had no sloped deck behind them, making the BISMARCK very vulnerable to raking fire from either end, especially as the main magazines were located directly behind these bulkheads

(7) The shallow extension of the belt allowed hits below it to frequently occur, as was demonstrated during the fight with the HMS Prince of Wales, bypassing the main armor belt and aggravating any flooding effects that projectiles punching through the belt above the low main armored deck might cause

The USS SOUTH DAKOTA (or, better yet, the USS IOWA) armor scheme shows that for most naval battles, an improved "conventional" side armor design (thin armored weather deck, high mounting of the heavy main armor deck at the top edge of the main armor belt, thin upper belt armor, inclined main armor belt, thin fragment screen plating spaced behind the belt armor, decapping plate in front of the main belt, and tapered lower belt armor to protect against diving projectiles) gives protection to the vitals that is just as good, if not better, than the BISMARCK's side armor protection with equal weight of armor and without most of the bad points that the BISMARCK's low and, in the flat regions, thin main armor deck gave. If the enemy can get close enough to frequently punch through an Iowa-type belt, the battle is probably already lost, anyway, as the last battle of the BISMARCK demonstrates."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clearly, the Bismark's armour scheme was flawed in some ways, however the concept of the "Turtleback" worked exactly as intended and provided effective immunity to vertical penetration of the citadel. Clearly there were costs associated with this, however the two main factors in Bismarks loss were not down to armour - lack of torpedo protection for the steering gear and 3 shafts instead of 4. The first allowed the steering to be disabled and the second prevented the ship from being effectively steered once the rudders were disabled.

If Germany had been given the opportunity to build a second class of battleships it is likely that all of these issues could have been resolved - remember that these ships were a first attempt by a nation that had been prevented from building battleships for 20 years and with no way of receiving foreign aid, so it is not surprising that their first attempt was flawed.

The question is whether they would have persisted with the "Turtleback" armour scheme if they had another attempt. Historically, and with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear to us that with the threat of aerial attack and the introduction of aircraft carriers the "Flat deck on belt" armour scheme was a better compromise, however was Germany in a position to see and correctly evaluate what was coming? Given their half-hearted attempts to develop carriers of their own I don't think so.

The final paragraph sums it up for me; "If the enemy can get close enough to frequently punch through an Iowa-type belt, the battle is probably already lost, anyway, as the last battle of the BISMARCK demonstrates." This is true in the real world but NOT true in RTW. As I have explained before, the way the game AI works means that you can only achieve decisive victory by closing to short range, and at short range the "Turtleback" armour scheme is king, even the flawed version applied to Bismark. If Germany had been given the opportunity to add such foreign ideas as inclined main belts, decapping plates, and tapered lower belts it would have been even better.
 

[abclark]

You have massively misinterpreted a sentence here. The author is trying to say that - IN WWII - German capital ships were the only ones that used that armor scheme. To quote the article (it’s even lower down in the portion you quoted):
“This armor scheme was a "beefed-up" version of the scheme used before and during WWI by German and many foreign battleships, which was abandoned by every other nation except Germany immediately after the last ships designed before or during that war were finished”

Take a gander at Bismarck here:
i.pinimg.com/originals/09/44/25/0944250c528dd735cd2f8ed9603596ad.png

Then take a gander at Nevada (commissioned 1916!) here:
www.shipscribe.com/styles/S-584/images/s-file/s584009.jpg

The Nevada class didn’t have the intermediate armor that most ships with an armored deck behind their belt featured, but they had a very similar citadel protection scheme to the Bismarcks.

[imryn]

In my opinion the key part of that sentence is "Beefed up". I am still struggling through the details to determine exactly what was changed in this "beefing up" process, however it is clear to me from the authors final conclusions ("The BISMARCK's internal vitals could not be directly reached through the side belt armor under any normal circumstances due to the sloped "turtle-back" armored deck design") that the sloped deck armour scheme in RTW does not represent this armour for the simple fact that ships in RTW with sloped deck armour do get belt penetrations regularly that damage the citadel.

Until I can find an article that compares WW2 turtle-back armour to WW1 pre-AoN armour schemes I won't be able to point at something and say "there, that's how they made it better", but seeing as I have never heard anyone claim this type of vertical immunity for any pre-Aon ship I think it is certain that there was a change, and it did improve the protection to a large degree.

[dorn]

Feb 16, 2019 3:05:32 GMT -6 imryn said:

In my opinion the key part of that sentence is "Beefed up". I am still struggling through the details to determine exactly what was changed in this "beefing up" process, however it is clear to me from the authors final conclusions ("The BISMARCK's internal vitals could not be directly reached through the side belt armor under any normal circumstances due to the sloped "turtle-back" armored deck design") that the sloped deck armour scheme in RTW does not represent this armour for the simple fact that ships in RTW with sloped deck armour do get belt penetrations regularly that damage the citadel.

Until I can find an article that compares WW2 turtle-back armour to WW1 pre-AoN armour schemes I won't be able to point at something and say "there, that's how they made it better", but seeing as I have never heard anyone claim this type of vertical immunity for any pre-Aon ship I think it is certain that there was a change, and it did improve the protection to a large degree.

You simplified conclusion.

The battleship is complete system. It needs to provide force projection by her guns and defend herself by her protection. To have tremendous firepower without being protected could limit battleship exposure to fire. On opposite to have excellent protection without being able to damage anything is second extreme which is useless too.

So we can be sure we need both, firepower to damage target and protection to be able sail and to project power.

We can start with firepower.

The main method for battleship is her main guns. However just having guns mean anything, you acutally need to hit. For that purpose there is different fire control systems. Question is how you can protect these systems. For gun turrets you can put armor to protect them. But for fire control system, it is difficult as the system is quite fragile and outside ship armored citadel.

Than we can have sailing abilities.

For that purpose you need propulsion system and non-damaged hull for best result. Propulsion system is mainly (only mainly!) protected by citadel, however aft shafts and screws are not protected by citadel.

Tha we need operation abilities, somebody needs to command and transfer this orders to all crew members. 

Command staff could be in armored conning tower but mostly navy officers choose unarmored bridger over armored conning tower. But there is a lot o staff, equipment higher in ship and some part of it is not protected.

Citadel

It is heavily protected and you have spoken about it that turtle back armor helps to protect citadel in short and medium distance.

However that is the point short and medium distance. With enhanced fire control there is no problem hit enemy ship at long distance as you closed the distance there are more hits. So turtle back armor protect main citadel but the rest of the ship are not protected. Even turrets would need extreme armor to protect them. So at these distance you get a lot of hits, destroying superstructure, doing a lot of damage, usually to fire control system so your chance to hit anything is decreased significantly. At this time citadel helps you protect vital but ship has been already disabled, her ability to damage anything is limited.

And there is another disadvantages for turtle back armor, your deck armor is lower in ship, so there is more space that are unarmored meaning more ship systems could be destroyed.

Look what happen Bismarck in her last battle. Not that it was equal fight but what hits did. They quickly disabled turrets, fire system, completely disabling ship and at this point having citadel protected is no win as the ship has been already dead.

[imryn]

I think it is a bit harsh to say I simplified the conclusion - better to say I selected the section of it which actually made my point.

You are absolutely right when you say that a ship is a trade off between many conflicting demands, and this can place limits on what can and can't be done which have nothing to do with the technical capability to actually implement something.

Every one of the examples you gave except citadel apply equally to "Flat deck on belt" armoured ships and "Turtleback" armoured ships. There is a weight saving with "Flat deck on belt" so you can argue that this allows you to have more protection, but that only holds true if you are building to a budget or up to a tonnage limit. Those constraints existed in the real world, but in RTW they (normally) don't.

My design method in RTW is to select the armament, armour, and speed I want and then increase the ships tonnage until it fits. To be clear, I don't compromise in any way on armament, armour, or speed. My designs are typically faster and more heavily armoured than anything the AI builds, and probably cost twice as much per ship as well. The pay off is that I don't loose many ships of any class in scenarios. I loose far more ships to random events than I ever loose to actual fighting.

I understand that this is not historically accurate but RTW is not a historical recreation.

Your statement that it is easy to hit ships at long range is IMHO over simplifying the situation, assuming you are talking about the situation in RTW. If you have a clear day with 32,000 yards spotting distance, you would want to position your line parallel to the enemy line at the longest range you can - between 25,000 and 32,000 assuming late game guns. I design my ships to have better deck armour and TT armour than AI built ships so I do not suffer unduly from plunging fire damage. I do not compromise on armour.

At that range the only portion of your fleet that is engaged is your capitals so you are entirely reliant on plunging fire from your heavy guns to inflict damage. The problems with this situation are many: Any ship that is damaged can simply turn away from you and disappear; You are not exerting any control over the enemy's actions, allowing them to hold and keep the initiative; you are only applying a tiny portion of your offensive strength; The AI will thoroughly screw you over with spotting distances.

This last one is the real reason I don't bother with long range gunnery. At 25,000 yards, with a max spotting distance of 32,000, your target will often switch from being identified to being unidentified and then back to identified. This might be due to smoke or localised weather or whatever, and I don't disagree with the programmers because its an accurate simulation of visibility during sea battles. My problem is how my ships behave. In the real world, if you are firing on an enemy BB and a bunch of smoke conceals the target you continue to fire on range and bearing and then adjust once you re-acquire the target visually. In RTW the moment you lose sight of the enemy ship you cease fire, train your guns around and start blazing away at a new target, and even when the original target is re-acquired you don't switch back. Even this would be OK if the AI applied even a tiny amount of prioritisation, but there is none, and my battleships will happily expend their entire ammunition load firing at lone DD's when there are entire divisions of BB's in range.

Now, if the AI is happy to allow you to continue the engagement at long range hits will accumulate on both sides. When the AI has one of its ships damaged past a certain point it will turn that ship out of the line to protect it; it is much more difficult for the player to do the same on a per ship basis, and you may end up turning a whole division away to protect one ship. As the battle progresses the AI will play conservatively and will disengage if it isn't certain of victory, and because you aren't exercising any control over his options he can do that without challenge. If the AI thinks it will win it will close the range and bring its cruisers and destroyers into play. Torpedoes are the real ship killers in RTW, not battleship guns.

When I fight fleet battles in RTW my first priority is to control the enemy fleet and limit his options to the ones I want him to have. The AI ALWAYS sets it up so he can turn towards a home port, and ALWAYS sets it up so the home port is nearby. So the first thing I have to do is flank the enemy and force them to turn away from their home port. To this end all of my late game BB's do 29 Kts and my BC's do 33 Kts, and I drive them hard up the flank to turn the enemy towards a handy land feature, or just away if no land is available. My capital ships take a pasting while I am doing this, however because I don't compromise on armour they generally get through OK. I control each capital division manually and monitor ship health closely. Once I have the enemy turned the battle is over - the AI still has lots of ships left but they can't escape and so long as I am patient I will get them all. I generally order a Flotilla attack early to get my CL's and DD's Torps in quickly. I maintain a fleet balance of 2 to 1 DD's to caps, and 1 to 1 CL's and my small ships are just as over engineered as my caps (my end game DD has 18 x 5", 12 torps and TDS2, my CL has 16 x 6", 12 x 5", 8 Torps and TDS4) and the secondaries and tertiary batteries on my caps (24 x 6", 60 x 5" on both BB and BC) contribute a lot to close in engagements.

Basically, my fleet doctrine is to run the enemy formations through a wood chipper, repeatedly. My ships of every class are faster, and better armed and armoured than the AI creates. The compromise is that they are twice as big and cost twice as much to build and maintain, but they are a least twice as effective.

In the real world the final battle of the Bismark illustrates what would happen to ANY battleship that was isolated, faced with overwhelming opposition, and unable to escape. Flaws in the Bismark's armour scheme were a factor in how quickly she was silenced, but the end result was never in doubt; nor would it have been if the USS Iowa was in a similar situation.

TL/DR All ships are a compromise based on many factors; many of the factors that are present in the real world are not present in RTW. We should only consider the factors that apply in RTW when designing ships in RTW.

[alexbrunius]

Feb 18, 2019 5:37:50 GMT -6 imryn said:

Every one of the examples you gave except citadel apply equally to "Flat deck on belt" armoured ships and "Turtleback" armoured ships. There is a weight saving with "Flat deck on belt" so you can argue that this allows you to have more protection, but that only holds true if you are building to a budget or up to a tonnage limit. Those constraints existed in the real world, but in RTW they (normally) don't.

If you normally play RTW with infinite budget then I think that your playing the game in a different way than most if not all other players are. Budget is always the main constraint in all my games of RTW at least.

[dorn]

Feb 18, 2019 5:37:50 GMT -6 imryn said:

I think it is a bit harsh to say I simplified the conclusion - better to say I selected the section of it which actually made my point.

You are absolutely right when you say that a ship is a trade off between many conflicting demands, and this can place limits on what can and can't be done which have nothing to do with the technical capability to actually implement something.

Every one of the examples you gave except citadel apply equally to "Flat deck on belt" armoured ships and "Turtleback" armoured ships. There is a weight saving with "Flat deck on belt" so you can argue that this allows you to have more protection, but that only holds true if you are building to a budget or up to a tonnage limit. Those constraints existed in the real world, but in RTW they (normally) don't.

My design method in RTW is to select the armament, armour, and speed I want and then increase the ships tonnage until it fits. To be clear, I don't compromise in any way on armament, armour, or speed. My designs are typically faster and more heavily armoured than anything the AI builds, and probably cost twice as much per ship as well. The pay off is that I don't loose many ships of any class in scenarios. I loose far more ships to random events than I ever loose to actual fighting.

I understand that this is not historically accurate but RTW is not a historical recreation.

Your statement that it is easy to hit ships at long range is IMHO over simplifying the situation, assuming you are talking about the situation in RTW. If you have a clear day with 32,000 yards spotting distance, you would want to position your line parallel to the enemy line at the longest range you can - between 25,000 and 32,000 assuming late game guns. I design my ships to have better deck armour and TT armour than AI built ships so I do not suffer unduly from plunging fire damage. I do not compromise on armour.

At that range the only portion of your fleet that is engaged is your capitals so you are entirely reliant on plunging fire from your heavy guns to inflict damage. The problems with this situation are many: Any ship that is damaged can simply turn away from you and disappear; You are not exerting any control over the enemy's actions, allowing them to hold and keep the initiative; you are only applying a tiny portion of your offensive strength; The AI will thoroughly screw you over with spotting distances.

This last one is the real reason I don't bother with long range gunnery. At 25,000 yards, with a max spotting distance of 32,000, your target will often switch from being identified to being unidentified and then back to identified. This might be due to smoke or localised weather or whatever, and I don't disagree with the programmers because its an accurate simulation of visibility during sea battles. My problem is how my ships behave. In the real world, if you are firing on an enemy BB and a bunch of smoke conceals the target you continue to fire on range and bearing and then adjust once you re-acquire the target visually. In RTW the moment you lose sight of the enemy ship you cease fire, train your guns around and start blazing away at a new target, and even when the original target is re-acquired you don't switch back. Even this would be OK if the AI applied even a tiny amount of prioritisation, but there is none, and my battleships will happily expend their entire ammunition load firing at lone DD's when there are entire divisions of BB's in range.

Now, if the AI is happy to allow you to continue the engagement at long range hits will accumulate on both sides. When the AI has one of its ships damaged past a certain point it will turn that ship out of the line to protect it; it is much more difficult for the player to do the same on a per ship basis, and you may end up turning a whole division away to protect one ship. As the battle progresses the AI will play conservatively and will disengage if it isn't certain of victory, and because you aren't exercising any control over his options he can do that without challenge. If the AI thinks it will win it will close the range and bring its cruisers and destroyers into play. Torpedoes are the real ship killers in RTW, not battleship guns.

When I fight fleet battles in RTW my first priority is to control the enemy fleet and limit his options to the ones I want him to have. The AI ALWAYS sets it up so he can turn towards a home port, and ALWAYS sets it up so the home port is nearby. So the first thing I have to do is flank the enemy and force them to turn away from their home port. To this end all of my late game BB's do 29 Kts and my BC's do 33 Kts, and I drive them hard up the flank to turn the enemy towards a handy land feature, or just away if no land is available. My capital ships take a pasting while I am doing this, however because I don't compromise on armour they generally get through OK. I control each capital division manually and monitor ship health closely. Once I have the enemy turned the battle is over - the AI still has lots of ships left but they can't escape and so long as I am patient I will get them all. I generally order a Flotilla attack early to get my CL's and DD's Torps in quickly. I maintain a fleet balance of 2 to 1 DD's to caps, and 1 to 1 CL's and my small ships are just as over engineered as my caps (my end game DD has 18 x 5", 12 torps and TDS2, my CL has 16 x 6", 12 x 5", 8 Torps and TDS4) and the secondaries and tertiary batteries on my caps (24 x 6", 60 x 5" on both BB and BC) contribute a lot to close in engagements.

Basically, my fleet doctrine is to run the enemy formations through a wood chipper, repeatedly. My ships of every class are faster, and better armed and armoured than the AI creates. The compromise is that they are twice as big and cost twice as much to build and maintain, but they are a least twice as effective.

In the real world the final battle of the Bismark illustrates what would happen to ANY battleship that was isolated, faced with overwhelming opposition, and unable to escape. Flaws in the Bismark's armour scheme were a factor in how quickly she was silenced, but the end result was never in doubt; nor would it have been if the USS Iowa was in a similar situation.

TL/DR All ships are a compromise based on many factors; many of the factors that are present in the real world are not present in RTW. We should only consider the factors that apply in RTW when designing ships in RTW.

Are you playing RTW game?

Visibility - max. visibility is 27.000 yards and usually quite lower

Battlecruisers - 33 knots - you can not even build 33 knots battlecruiser. You can do it only by rebuild (it is completely not effective) or designing to 32 knots with being lucky making ships 33 knots. Even if you design battlecruiser at 32 knots on 52.000 tons (qutie expensive) you can get something something around 3x2x15" guns, 12.5" belt, 15" turret, 4" deck, so quite vulnerable ship. This ship would costs about 215 M, going down only by 4 knots ship is cheaper about 90 M!

Long range duel:

With experience crew and specialized gunnery training and good tactics I get around 20.000 with probability about 4-5% hit. This is quite enough as it means that my ships with 8 main guns would hit approximetly every second to third round.

I usually fight like that with some older battlecruisers which have not enough armor to sustain combat in medium range.

Just about your comparison between Iowa and Bismarck. No capital ship could handle situation of Bismarck in her last fight. However her armor scheme "helped" situation. Issue is that you have much less volume protected. If you compare KGV and Bismarck armor you can see that KGV class battleship and other modern battleship have armor much higher protecting much more volume of the ship. This volume is not "empty". 

You think only about ship to ship combat however the scheme is much worse against dive bombers too as bombs detonate much lower in ships doing much more damage. This is not issue in RTW and this is reason that we build sometimes turtleback battleships in RTW late in the game. But usually till you get to max amount of belt armor, the AoN is even in game better as AoN protected more volume even in RTW.

[imryn]

Feb 18, 2019 6:59:55 GMT -6 dorn said:

Feb 18, 2019 5:37:50 GMT -6 imryn said:

I think it is a bit harsh to say I simplified the conclusion - better to say I selected the section of it which actually made my point.

...

TL/DR All ships are a compromise based on many factors; many of the factors that are present in the real world are not present in RTW. We should only consider the factors that apply in RTW when designing ships in RTW.

Are you playing RTW game?

Visibility - max. visibility is 27.000 yards and usually quite lower

Battlecruisers - 33 knots - you can not even build 33 knots battlecruiser. You can do it only by rebuild (it is completely not effective) or designing to 32 knots with being lucky making ships 33 knots. Even if you design battlecruiser at 32 knots on 52.000 tons (qutie expensive) you can get something something around 3x2x15" guns, 12.5" belt, 15" turret, 4" deck, so quite vulnerable ship. This ship would costs about 215 M, going down only by 4 knots ship is cheaper about 90 M!

Long range duel:

With experience crew and specialized gunnery training and good tactics I get around 20.000 with probability about 4-5% hit. This is quite enough as it means that my ships with 8 main guns would hit approximetly every second to third round.

I usually fight like that with some older battlecruisers which have not enough armor to sustain combat in medium range.

Just about your comparison between Iowa and Bismarck. No capital ship could handle situation of Bismarck in her last fight. However her armor scheme "helped" situation. Issue is that you have much less volume protected. If you compare KGV and Bismarck armor you can see that KGV class battleship and other modern battleship have armor much higher protecting much more volume of the ship. This volume is not "empty". 

You think only about ship to ship combat however the scheme is much worse against dive bombers too as bombs detonate much lower in ships doing much more damage. This is not issue in RTW and this is reason that we build sometimes turtleback battleships in RTW late in the game. But usually till you get to max amount of belt armor, the AoN is even in game better as AoN protected more volume even in RTW.

Yes I am, with the 18+ armour mod applied. At end game that allows me to build a BB on (IIRC) c. 65,000 tons, 29 kts, 9 x 17" ABL, 24 x 6", 60 x 5", 28" B, 8" D, 28" CT, 29" T, 10" TT, 2" Sec. The BC is almost identical, about 5,000 tons bigger with belt reduced to 24.5".

Your comment about long range gunnery is irrelevant - so what if you get more hits? Damaged ships turn away and escape, AI does not commit to close quarters and escapes to port. At best you get a marginal victory, and if the AI gets a "random" "Your BB got torped on its way home" event that result could go the other way. I am not telling you how to play the game; you should continue to play the game in whatever fashion makes you happy. What I am telling you is the way the AI plays the game, and one way of beating it consistently.

"Issue is that you have much less volume protected" this is just simply not true. The volume of the citadel is directly linked to the tonnage of the ship because of the reserve buoyancy function. A 50,000 ton ship with Flat deck and a 50,000 ton ship with Turtleback will have exactly the same volume citadels. Even if the flat deck ship did have a larger protected volume this is not necessarily a good thing when the belt armour can be penetrated and this will allow damage to the citadel, compared to a scheme which is immune to citadel damage via penetration of the belt.

I haven't had an opportunity to play RTW2 yet, but historically ship designers added additional armoured decks higher up in the ship to detonate bombs before they reached the main armoured deck - easier to do in a turtleback ship than a flat deck ship!

[imryn]

Feb 18, 2019 5:59:20 GMT -6 alexbrunius said:

Feb 18, 2019 5:37:50 GMT -6 imryn said:

Every one of the examples you gave except citadel apply equally to "Flat deck on belt" armoured ships and "Turtleback" armoured ships. There is a weight saving with "Flat deck on belt" so you can argue that this allows you to have more protection, but that only holds true if you are building to a budget or up to a tonnage limit. Those constraints existed in the real world, but in RTW they (normally) don't.

If you normally play RTW with infinite budget then I think that your playing the game in a different way than most if not all other players are. Budget is always the main constraint in all my games of RTW at least.

I play with normal budgets and build the ships as and when I can afford them. My ships are expensive so I have fewer of them and have to make do. This means careful choices about where I deploy them, to get the most benefit.

I would rather have a small but strong fleet that can kick ass wherever I position it, compared to a big but weak fleet that I can spread out all over the world but is locally not capable of fighting 1 to 1 odds.

[dorn]

imryn

I do not play 18+ mod as I think it put game a little of balance so I cannot say how it works. However I expect basic principles of the game remain same, the main features are allowance of larger ships and more armor.

If you are fighting at 20.000 yards and enemy ships are damaged and turning away even if they have 3 knots advantage it takes several half an hour to get out of range and it is unlikely that damaged done do not decrease their speed. Usually in fleet engagement you have scout force of battlecruisers. That battlecruisers are much faster than enemy battlefleet so they cannot escape scout force which could further damage them and slow down.

The volume of citadel is link to tonnage of the ship but large ship need large citadel as you need approximetly same percentage of protected area.

The armor scheme you have spoken was not used in any capital ship in 20th century. Even Bismarck was weaknesses in citadel. To have same volume as standard modern battleship of 30s you need much longer citadel to compensate that this citadel is not going so high. This means additional inefficiency as longer citadel means more armor needs to protect same volume. It is much more efficient to use the tonnage to make thicker armor belt.

In RTW there is sloped deck armor scheme. However this scheme is from WW1 so there is not citadel to protect ship buoyancy. RTW is designed about real history and thinking of naval engineering of beginning of 20th century. We have handsight and trying to design ship better than historical was (AB and ABL layouts) but there is still a lot of limitation to put you in situation that was real. And there was no real capital ship with design you describe so it is quite normal that game does not allow that.
Just note, game does not show forward and aft bulkheads however there were quite important closing the citadel. In game it is taken as these bulkheads have same protection as main belt.

There is a lot of question if it is better to have single armor to protect area against bombs/hits or have several layers. And bombs have usual delayed fuze. So it is completly different subject and quite complex.

[archelaos]

Feb 18, 2019 7:29:47 GMT -6 imryn said:

Yes I am, with the 18+ armour mod applied. At end game that allows me to build a BB on (IIRC) c. 65,000 tons, 29 kts, 9 x 17" ABL, 24 x 6", 60 x 5", 28" B, 8" D, 28" CT, 29" T, 10" TT, 2" Sec. The BC is almost identical, about 5,000 tons bigger with belt reduced to 24.5".

That's why I do not like 18+ mod and never installed it - it allows designs breaking laws of physics, such as this one

Your comment about long range gunnery is irrelevant - so what if you get more hits? Damaged ships turn away and escape, AI does not commit to close quarters and escapes to port. At best you get a marginal victory, and if the AI gets a "random" "Your BB got torped on its way home" event that result could go the other way. I am not telling you how to play the game; you should continue to play the game in whatever fashion makes you happy. What I am telling you is the way the AI plays the game, and one way of beating it consistently.

This is due to absurdly thick armour allowed by 18+ mod, allowing late game battles to turn into attrition battles typical to early game clashes between pre-dreads. In unmodded game a few hits of 15+in guns on the deck could and often would severely damage a ship, esp. AI design with rather thin deck

"Issue is that you have much less volume protected" this is just simply not true. The volume of the citadel is directly linked to the tonnage of the ship because of the reserve buoyancy function. A 50,000 ton ship with Flat deck and a 50,000 ton ship with Turtleback will have exactly the same volume citadels. Even if the flat deck ship did have a larger protected volume this is not necessarily a good thing when the belt armour can be penetrated and this will allow damage to the citadel, compared to a scheme which is immune to citadel damage via penetration of the belt.

Highlighted part is exactly what people here argue against. Due to Turtledeck having armour 2 decks lower its citadel volume would be much smaller. Unless you assume turtledeck will be significantly larger on same displacement to allow wider or longer citadel.
It seems to me you think a bit like in WoWS damage calculation - that small citadel low in water is good, as it is rarely hit while higher citadel of AoN ship is liability as it is easier to hit. In real life there was no empty volume above main belt and shell exploding there could easily make the ship incapable of fighting. That's what happened to Bismarck, BDW. What's more, if the bow and stern is pierced and flooded, the ship will sit lower and as result it could sink due to penetration of upper belt above citadel as the flooding above the deck will destabilise the ship (That's what happened to Kirishima)

I haven't had an opportunity to play RTW2 yet, but historically ship designers added additional armoured decks higher up in the ship to detonate bombs before they reached the main armoured deck - easier to do in a turtleback ship than a flat deck ship!

Why it is easier in turtleback? In fact turtleback do not protect anything except engines and magazines, so mere HE bombs (heavy enough to crush through weather deck) could virtually raze the ship all the way to the waterline while AoN ship will have at least some areas protected by it's high sitting main deck

[imryn]

Feb 18, 2019 12:26:52 GMT -6 dorn said:

imryn

I do not play 18+ mod as I think it put game a little of balance so I cannot say how it works. However I expect basic principles of the game remain same, the main features are allowance of larger ships and more armor.

If you are fighting at 20.000 yards and enemy ships are damaged and turning away even if they have 3 knots advantage it takes several half an hour to get out of range and it is unlikely that damaged done do not decrease their speed. Usually in fleet engagement you have scout force of battlecruisers. That battlecruisers are much faster than enemy battlefleet so they cannot escape scout force which could further damage them and slow down.

The volume of citadel is link to tonnage of the ship but large ship need large citadel as you need approximetly same percentage of protected area.

The armor scheme you have spoken was not used in any capital ship in 20th century. Even Bismarck was weaknesses in citadel. To have same volume as standard modern battleship of 30s you need much longer citadel to compensate that this citadel is not going so high. This means additional inefficiency as longer citadel means more armor needs to protect same volume. It is much more efficient to use the tonnage to make thicker armor belt.

In RTW there is sloped deck armor scheme. However this scheme is from WW1 so there is not citadel to protect ship buoyancy. RTW is designed about real history and thinking of naval engineering of beginning of 20th century. We have handsight and trying to design ship better than historical was (AB and ABL layouts) but there is still a lot of limitation to put you in situation that was real. And there was no real capital ship with design you describe so it is quite normal that game does not allow that.
Just note, game does not show forward and aft bulkheads however there were quite important closing the citadel. In game it is taken as these bulkheads have same protection as main belt.

There is a lot of question if it is better to have single armor to protect area against bombs/hits or have several layers. And bombs have usual delayed fuze. So it is completly different subject and quite complex.

The AI will turn individual ships away and run them towards its home port, leaving the remainder of its fleet in place fighting you. This will continue until the AI either runs away or closes in to destroy you. Given how conservative the AI is if it thinks it can destroy you then you are really in a bad place. If the AI runs away you will have an opportunity to pursue with your faster BC's, assuming you have them, they are undamaged, and they have ammunition left. You will have a short time where you can actually run down and kill AI's ships before the bulk of his fleet is safe in port.

This is massively inefficient. Most of your ammunition is expended at long range causing damage to ships that will escape and be repaired to fight another day, and the actual number of ships you sink will be a tiny portion of the ships you damage. If you take steps to control the actions of the AI, as I described earlier you will have the opportunity to sink every one of those ships instead of just damaging them.

According to everything I have read there were no capital ships built after 1912 that didn't have a citadel once the concept was introduced (re-introduced, technically) by the USA. All of Nothing design principals were applied to every ship built from that time onwards, regardless of whether they were protected by a flat deck on belt armour scheme or not. RTW is BASED on real history, but that is just the starting point. Within the game we have technologies that existed in the real world and we are allowed to apply them as we see fit. The USA never built a ship with an ABL turret layout (I don't think they did anyway) so should they be prevented from building one in RTW? For that matter should we be limited to only build copies of ships that existed in the real world?

The question of protecting ships from bombs is a complex one, but one method that was used in the real world was to add additional armoured decks above the main armoured deck. The purpose was to trigger the fuse in the bomb to cause it to detonate above the main armoured deck, so these additional decks had to be far enough above the main armoured deck to allow for the fuse delay you described. Thus there is a fixed vertical distance between the two armoured deck. Putting armoured decks this high up in the ship presents all sorts of problems with stability. Because a turtleback armoured deck is positioned much lower in the ship than a flat armoured deck these additional armoured decks can be positioned proportionately lower in the ship and still maintain the necessary vertical separation, and thus cause fewer stability issues.

[imryn]

Feb 18, 2019 14:40:29 GMT -6 archelaos said:

Feb 18, 2019 7:29:47 GMT -6 imryn said:

Yes I am, with the 18+ armour mod applied. At end game that allows me to build a BB on (IIRC) c. 65,000 tons, 29 kts, 9 x 17" ABL, 24 x 6", 60 x 5", 28" B, 8" D, 28" CT, 29" T, 10" TT, 2" Sec. The BC is almost identical, about 5,000 tons bigger with belt reduced to 24.5".

That's why I do not like 18+ mod and never installed it - it allows designs breaking laws of physics, such as this one

Your comment about long range gunnery is irrelevant - so what if you get more hits? Damaged ships turn away and escape, AI does not commit to close quarters and escapes to port. At best you get a marginal victory, and if the AI gets a "random" "Your BB got torped on its way home" event that result could go the other way. I am not telling you how to play the game; you should continue to play the game in whatever fashion makes you happy. What I am telling you is the way the AI plays the game, and one way of beating it consistently.

This is due to absurdly thick armour allowed by 18+ mod, allowing late game battles to turn into attrition battles typical to early game clashes between pre-dreads. In unmodded game a few hits of 15+in guns on the deck could and often would severely damage a ship, esp. AI design with rather thin deck

"Issue is that you have much less volume protected" this is just simply not true. The volume of the citadel is directly linked to the tonnage of the ship because of the reserve buoyancy function. A 50,000 ton ship with Flat deck and a 50,000 ton ship with Turtleback will have exactly the same volume citadels. Even if the flat deck ship did have a larger protected volume this is not necessarily a good thing when the belt armour can be penetrated and this will allow damage to the citadel, compared to a scheme which is immune to citadel damage via penetration of the belt.

Highlighted part is exactly what people here argue against. Due to Turtledeck having armour 2 decks lower its citadel volume would be much smaller. Unless you assume turtledeck will be significantly larger on same displacement to allow wider or longer citadel.
It seems to me you think a bit like in WoWS damage calculation - that small citadel low in water is good, as it is rarely hit while higher citadel of AoN ship is liability as it is easier to hit. In real life there was no empty volume above main belt and shell exploding there could easily make the ship incapable of fighting. That's what happened to Bismarck, BDW. What's more, if the bow and stern is pierced and flooded, the ship will sit lower and as result it could sink due to penetration of upper belt above citadel as the flooding above the deck will destabilise the ship (That's what happened to Kirishima)

I haven't had an opportunity to play RTW2 yet, but historically ship designers added additional armoured decks higher up in the ship to detonate bombs before they reached the main armoured deck - easier to do in a turtleback ship than a flat deck ship!

Why it is easier in turtleback? In fact turtleback do not protect anything except engines and magazines, so mere HE bombs (heavy enough to crush through weather deck) could virtually raze the ship all the way to the waterline while AoN ship will have at least some areas protected by it's high sitting main deck

Hardly breaking the laws of physics surely, just extending the available options.

NOT due to armour, whether absurd or not. Ship gets damaged and the AI turns it away - it doesn't make a bit of difference whether it is damaged by a 17" hit on a 6" deck or a 15" hit on a 3" deck. The AI's behavior does not change. The 18+ mod actually adds additional designs for the AI that have realistic levels of deck armour.

ITS NOT LARGER!!!! ITS NOT SMALLER!!! It is the SAME VOLUME. The armour and damage models used in WOWS are pretty realistic, the accuracy of the guns is where it is unrealistic. In WOWS the guns are at least 1000% more accurate than real life, to suit the arcade style of gameplay. Every ship has stuff outside the citadel that is critical and can be destroyed. The Bismark has been criticised for this, but it is true for all ships. Fire control, command and control, communications etc all have to be outside the citadel.

The danger presented by flooding above the citadel exists, however it is caused by the water moving from side to side and causing the ship to capsize. This is what happened to the Kirishima. The Bismark was designed with very heavy compartmentalisation in this area and despite taking vastly more damage than the Kirishima did is not reported to have any stability issues.

In the real world protection against bombs was provided by adding additional armoured decks above the main armoured deck. The purpose was to trigger the fuse in the bomb to cause it to detonate above the main armoured deck, so these additional decks had to be far enough above the main armoured deck to allow for the fuse delay. Thus there is a fixed vertical distance between the two armoured deck. Putting armoured decks this high up in the ship presents all sorts of problems with stability. Because a turtleback armoured deck is positioned much lower in the ship than a flat armoured deck these additional armoured decks can be positioned proportionately lower in the ship and still maintain the necessary vertical separation, and thus cause fewer stability issues.

[dorn]

Feb 19, 2019 3:19:14 GMT -6 imryn said:

Feb 18, 2019 12:26:52 GMT -6 dorn said:

imryn

I do not play 18+ mod as I think it put game a little of balance so I cannot say how it works. However I expect basic principles of the game remain same, the main features are allowance of larger ships and more armor.

If you are fighting at 20.000 yards and enemy ships are damaged and turning away even if they have 3 knots advantage it takes several half an hour to get out of range and it is unlikely that damaged done do not decrease their speed. Usually in fleet engagement you have scout force of battlecruisers. That battlecruisers are much faster than enemy battlefleet so they cannot escape scout force which could further damage them and slow down.

The volume of citadel is link to tonnage of the ship but large ship need large citadel as you need approximetly same percentage of protected area.

The armor scheme you have spoken was not used in any capital ship in 20th century. Even Bismarck was weaknesses in citadel. To have same volume as standard modern battleship of 30s you need much longer citadel to compensate that this citadel is not going so high. This means additional inefficiency as longer citadel means more armor needs to protect same volume. It is much more efficient to use the tonnage to make thicker armor belt.

In RTW there is sloped deck armor scheme. However this scheme is from WW1 so there is not citadel to protect ship buoyancy. RTW is designed about real history and thinking of naval engineering of beginning of 20th century. We have handsight and trying to design ship better than historical was (AB and ABL layouts) but there is still a lot of limitation to put you in situation that was real. And there was no real capital ship with design you describe so it is quite normal that game does not allow that.
Just note, game does not show forward and aft bulkheads however there were quite important closing the citadel. In game it is taken as these bulkheads have same protection as main belt.

There is a lot of question if it is better to have single armor to protect area against bombs/hits or have several layers. And bombs have usual delayed fuze. So it is completly different subject and quite complex.

The AI will turn individual ships away and run them towards its home port, leaving the remainder of its fleet in place fighting you. This will continue until the AI either runs away or closes in to destroy you. Given how conservative the AI is if it thinks it can destroy you then you are really in a bad place. If the AI runs away you will have an opportunity to pursue with your faster BC's, assuming you have them, they are undamaged, and they have ammunition left. You will have a short time where you can actually run down and kill AI's ships before the bulk of his fleet is safe in port.

This is massively inefficient. Most of your ammunition is expended at long range causing damage to ships that will escape and be repaired to fight another day, and the actual number of ships you sink will be a tiny portion of the ships you damage. If you take steps to control the actions of the AI, as I described earlier you will have the opportunity to sink every one of those ships instead of just damaging them.

According to everything I have read there were no capital ships built after 1912 that didn't have a citadel once the concept was introduced (re-introduced, technically) by the USA. All of Nothing design principals were applied to every ship built from that time onwards, regardless of whether they were protected by a flat deck on belt armour scheme or not. RTW is BASED on real history, but that is just the starting point. Within the game we have technologies that existed in the real world and we are allowed to apply them as we see fit. The USA never built a ship with an ABL turret layout (I don't think they did anyway) so should they be prevented from building one in RTW? For that matter should we be limited to only build copies of ships that existed in the real world?

The question of protecting ships from bombs is a complex one, but one method that was used in the real world was to add additional armoured decks above the main armoured deck. The purpose was to trigger the fuse in the bomb to cause it to detonate above the main armoured deck, so these additional decks had to be far enough above the main armoured deck to allow for the fuse delay you described. Thus there is a fixed vertical distance between the two armoured deck. Putting armoured decks this high up in the ship presents all sorts of problems with stability. Because a turtleback armoured deck is positioned much lower in the ship than a flat armoured deck these additional armoured decks can be positioned proportionately lower in the ship and still maintain the necessary vertical separation, and thus cause fewer stability issues.

Yes, it was reintroduced by USN however the first capital ship except USN I am aware using this was Nelson class battleships.

Relating to bombs you can do it and designers did it but than you can increase the dealy. So it is again circle. However effect of armor scheme used except Bismarck was that the damage by boms is as much as high as possible. Which is not possible with turtle back armor without additional deck armor above practically doubling amount of deck armor.

Relating to ABL design. It should be done similar way as 4 centerline turrets or 5 centerline turrets - you need to invented it - it would be this way in RTW2, developers mentioned it.

The stability issue with armor higher could be issue however it was mainly issue of carriers and cruisers after adding a lot of additional AA guns. Look at HMS Vanguard, her deck is quite high and she was very stable gun platform.