The Wind Advantage and What it Means

[shadepiece]

I am pretty new to the actual and realistic history of warships and their tactics. I've played World of Warships for a long time and love it or hate it it's how I find myself here interested in more in-depth realistic simulations of these iron beasts!

My question here is what exactly is the wind advantage. I have been watching a lot of RtW1 videos on YouTube and this is something that is often referenced, but not something that I fully grasp as a concept.

I'm sure it's been covered before, but I'd like to know what the significance is exactly. Thanks in advance for your time.

Cheers!
-Shadepiece

[akosjaccik]

Took a look at Fredrik's Tidbits, here's what I found, I quote:

"Every ship leaves smoke tracks and when computing accuracy all smoke between the firing ship and the target are taken into account. So smoke from other ships might vary well come into it.
Smoke will move with the wind, but the ships are moving too, which means that smoke from the ship will generally appear to spread as combined vector of ship movement and wind movement.
Try to have the target not downwind, that will help."

So, if the line of sight is covered partially by smoke, be it generated smoke, smoke from floats, or smoke from the funnels or even accumulated gunpowder smoke during prolonged battle, the accuracy gets a negative modifier as far as I know.

[garrisonchisholm]

And of course with RTW2 you will have to consider your carrier's operations. Since all carriers launch into the wind, one side might be able to launch while closing the enemy and the other would need to turn away. Also worth bearing in mind when you decide how close land to steer your force. It could cause an awful muddle if your CVs had to turn west just to give themselves 12 minutes of room to turn east to launch.

[shadepiece]

So if I follow the logic correctly in both cases you would want the wind blowing into you then?

[aeson]

Apr 30, 2019 19:00:39 GMT -6 shadepiece said:

So if I follow the logic correctly in both cases you would want the wind blowing into you then?

By 'into' I assume you mean from the direction of the enemy towards your force? If so, yes, for a gunnery engagement, you would ideally want the wind to be blowing 'into' your forces. With carriers, though? Do you want your carriers to close with the enemy? As long as your carriers are within effective scouting/striking range you don't really need them to get any closer to the enemy, and in fact it may very well be better for you to be moving parallel to or even away from the enemy than towards them - you don't really want your carriers closing the range any more than necessary on a hostile force of battleships, for example, and even in a more or less symmetrical engagement it'd be perfectly acceptable to have your carrier force paralleling the enemy's carrier force once your carriers are within effective striking range. It's entirely plausible that having the wind blowing from your carrier force towards the enemy carrier force would be at least somewhat advantageous in a symmetrical engagement between evenly-matched forces, if the game model is sufficiently detailed, as your strike aircraft would have a tailwind speeding them along towards the enemy forces, your enemy's aircraft would be fighting a headwind to reach your forces, and the 'natural' movement of your forces and your enemy's forces effectively reduces the distance your strike aircraft have to cover to reach the enemy forces and increases the distance your enemy's strike aircraft have to cover to reach your forces.

[noshurviverse]

One thing that's somewhat confused me, is smoke interference affected by distance and if so how? If the wind is blowing from the North and me and the enemy are moving E-W, with my force to the North (thus, my smoke is being blown between us), who is more affected by my smoke? Is it the same?

[williammiller]

With carriers in RTW2 it is possible to get into a position where to launch your aircraft you would have to sail towards the enemy if the wind is bearing from their relative heading. I've even seen a beta-tester remark (complain?) how his carrier force was in that exact position at a shorter-than-desired range once...

[dorn]

Apr 30, 2019 22:00:17 GMT -6 williammiller said:

With carriers in RTW2 it is possible to get into a position where to launch your aircraft you would have to sail towards the enemy if the wind is bearing from their relative heading. I've even seen a beta-tester remark (complain?) how his carrier force was in that exact position at a shorter-than-desired range once...

I would like to have Stringbag. No need for that.

[aeson]

Apr 30, 2019 20:53:03 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

One thing that's somewhat confused me, is smoke interference affected by distance and if so how? If the wind is blowing from the North and me and the enemy are moving E-W, with my force to the North (thus, my smoke is being blown between us), who is more affected by my smoke? Is it the same?

You're more affected by your smoke blowing between you and your enemy than your enemy is.

[bcoopactual]

Apr 30, 2019 20:53:03 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

One thing that's somewhat confused me, is smoke interference affected by distance and if so how? If the wind is blowing from the North and me and the enemy are moving E-W, with my force to the North (thus, my smoke is being blown between us), who is more affected by my smoke? Is it the same?

aeson is correct (as usual).

Imagine in the above picture if they were firing downwind instead of upwind.  The exhaust smoke from the ship the picture was taken from would be drifting into North Dakota's engaged side field of view, instead of back towards the unengaged side, and the smoke from the guns would also linger between the battlelines so the preceding ship's gunfire would leave a smoke cloud that North Dakota would steam up to and then could have their picture of the enemy target blocked possibly causing them to not see shell splashes for corrections or lose contact entirely if visibility is not great.  

[shadepiece]

What a perfect picture to describe the concept! This makes so much more sense now.

[Antediluvian Monster]

What kind of coal did USN use, btw? I know Japanese imported Welsh anthracite for naval use since it burned more cleanly. Later they managed to make their native coal supplies acceptable by briqueting techniques.

Hmm, found this one: www.scientificamerican.com/article/anthracite-and-welsh-coal/

Seems like the caloric content of Welsh and Pennsylvanian anthracite weren't too different. Since the caloric content isn't going to come from the poorly combusting residue it seems reasonable to project they were both relatively clean (nowdays apparently advertized as smokeless, yeah right). Still, North Dakota is producing some copious fumes there.

[noshurviverse]

May 1, 2019 7:25:11 GMT -6 bcoopactual said:

Imagine in the above picture if they were firing downwind instead of upwind.  The exhaust smoke from the ship the picture was taken from would be drifting into North Dakota's engaged side field of view, instead of back towards the unengaged side, and the smoke from the guns would also linger between the battlelines so the preceding ship's gunfire would leave a smoke cloud that North Dakota would steam up to and then could have their picture of the enemy target blocked possibly causing them to not see shell splashes for corrections or lose contact entirely if visibility is not great.  

I understand that all well and good, my main question was as to how significant a difference the accuracy penalty is for each side. So for your picture, if North Dakota was firing at an enemy downwind, yes her spotting would be hampered by her smoke. But how badly would her enemy, firing at her, be hampered by North Dakota's smoke? Especially in a battle line scenario, I could see a situation where it's difficult to spot rounds landing if they are producing significant smoke clouds.

[Antediluvian Monster]

Smoke from target ship could obscure coincidence rangefinding I think, and perhaps make it harder to spot 'overs'.

[bcoopactual]

May 1, 2019 9:55:35 GMT -6 noshurviverse said:

I understand that all well and good, my main question was as to how significant a difference the accuracy penalty is for each side. So for your picture, if North Dakota was firing at an enemy downwind, yes her spotting would be hampered by her smoke. But how badly would her enemy, firing at her, be hampered by North Dakota's smoke? Especially in a battle line scenario, I could see a situation where it's difficult to spot rounds landing if they are producing significant smoke clouds.

I didn't intend to be patronizing so if it came off that way I apologize.

I don't know what the hard numbers are for accuracy penalties for the two sides are in-game. There was a thread where one of the forum members wrote down the accuracy modifiers he saw for a number of battles. I'll try to find it and provide a link because it's been too long ago to remember the details.  [Edit - Found it.  jwsmith26 put the data together.  Looking at it I'm guessing that the smoke penalty only applies to own ship smoke but it could be worked into the penalty for ships fouling the range.]   

While target smoke certainly doesn't help, I'm not sure how much of a significant hindrance it would be. Shell splashes from larger caliber guns are described as being masthead height or higher so they would extend above the target ship's superstructure even when the shells land over.

Part of the problem with giving you a good answer is most of the references I've found like this one are from WW2 after navies had switched to oil fuel and therefore the ships did not produce nearly as much smoke.