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Post by owe166 on May 21, 2019 0:47:02 GMT -6
Hey guys. Been getting into RTW2 pretty good but would like some design tips. Let me show you some of the monstrosities i made so you can rip em apart and help me learn a bit here. BattleshipsIts currently 1907 in my UK game and the first set of dreadnoughts are in the shipyards. The race is on! And here's the opening competitors. 29,000 ton 12-12"(0) Guns and immunity to her own guns up to 13000 yards till her deck armour starts to fail. Shes still coal firing and her design study and ship orders placed a month before 3 centerline turrets and steam turbines dropped. Might have jumped the gun but oh well... Heavy/Protected CrusiersCanada-Class, Cheap, Lightly armoured and armoured colonial service CAs. Honestly more like CLs... 8,000 tons,20 knots with 6-6" guns Light CruisersGotta admit. These things are kinda werid in 1907. Dont really know where they should be. Using them as scouts and raiders as of right now. Emerald Class. 5200 ton 24knots 6-6inch 8-4 inch secondarys. 2.5 inch belt. Supposed to be used as a Scout cruiser and patrol ship. Colony Class. Think Canada class but their got the right class this time. 3,500 tons, 20 knots, 9-5 Inch 4-3 Inch secondarys 3 inch belt. Meant souly as second line CLs. Colonial service. (Note: Havent been able to make semi acceptable pictures for them, so just text descrips for them. (Destroyers and Corvettes)
Cossack Class. First 600 ton DDs i built. Depence Class Corvettes. Meant to free up DDs from TP Alright gentlemen. Rip the designs and the pictures apart.
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Post by pirateradar on May 21, 2019 1:19:40 GMT -6
Lovely pictures. It's easier to give detailed feedback if we can see the more detailed design screen, but just going off of these:
Revenge: A fine 1905 dreadnought, if a little on the heavy side--22 knots is probably unnecessary and that hexagonal layout isn't the most efficient, as you note (always frustrating when that tech drops just after you finish a design). Ships of this era go obsolete pretty rapidly anyway.
Canada: This one is going to run into problems, because the game's battle generator simply sees it as a CA. By 1907 I'm betting your rivals are already fielding 4x10" CAs that make 22 or 23 knots. These will fare poorly in a stand-up fight, but they can't run away either.
The light cruisers you mention sound fine. That Colony class might, again, run into problems because of its low speed, but as long as it's only up against enemy CLs it ought to be able to fend them off and keep your trade lanes open. Neither of them sound like raiders, but that's fine--you're Great Britain, it's your trade lanes people are trying to raid in the first place!
The Cossack class I would say is undergunned, but a 4-tube armament is undeniably very useful. In DD-on-DD fights, though, it will likely come off worse than the other guys.
The corvette seems too large for a TP corvette to me, but I haven't run the numbers with the way KEs work in RtW2 to figure out if it's more efficient to build large corvettes and mothball them between wars, or to keep building sets of smaller corvettes and selling them off each war.
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Post by ramjb on May 21, 2019 4:19:38 GMT -6
BB- Not bad for a pre-centerline arrangement. In my experience 3xcenterline is not THAT best than what you have, as it pretty much forces you to use a couple wing turrets anyway if you want an 8 gun broadside (10 with crossfire). Speed is far too ambitious and costly pre-turbines for a ship of that displacement. 20 knots is already pushing it with old triple expansion engines, 22 must've costed a lot in terms of displacement. For 20 knots you'd been able to have 6'' secondaries and some 3'' for your tertiary - 5'' only are a bit suspect for close in engagements for my taste. Still - proper protection and good punch, not a bad ship. AC- well for colonial work you're going to get a good chunk of your tonnage needs covered. Just pray that thing doesn't see anything bigger than a CL or it'll be in some serious trouble XD. CL- Statwise looks like a sweet one for the time. 24 knots is very good and useful for scouting/Screening roles before turbines happen, weapons are adequate if a bit on the light side, displacement is perfectly fine for such a ship. Only caveat is that it won't be very good for very long as once turbines happen CL speed jumps up noticeably and 24 knots won't be that good anymore. But at that stage you still have perfectly decent ships, if not fast anymore, to deploy in colonial roles. DD- ahh the good four single tubes using 2 abreast besides the bridge . I use that config a lot for my initial DDs too. 28 knots is respectable, 4 torps very good at this stage. Neat ship. KE- well not much to go wrong design wise with this guys, is it? .
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Post by janxol on May 21, 2019 4:19:58 GMT -6
Canada will suffer. In that time period CA are basically mini-dreadnoughts. (or mini-BCs, should I say). It has no way of standing up to other CAs aas it is terribly undergunned and lacks torpedoes. With that out of the way, for other ships. Revenge seems fine, even if the turret placement is inefficient I do like those early designs. Too bad they become obsolete so fast. Personally Is tick to 6 in guns as secondaries, but I suppose it just preference. The Cossack is undergunned. There are two philosophies of early DDs - either you go for guboats or torpedo boats. With that said, dropping to 2 inch guns is not justifiable with 4 tubes in my opinion. It feels almost suspicious, especially comapred with what I was able to cram into it in 1906(going for gunboat):
I wouldnt drop primary armament below 3 in guns unless equipping a ridicilous amount of torpedoes.
Regarding KEs in my experience its nice having a couple in peacetime so that you can throw them onto trade protection without waiting 4 months untill converted ones are built. Their upkeep is also much less than DDs. I go for two half-sister KE types: one for ASW, one for minesweeping. Early on 600 ton should be enough. They only need to be larger once you want to strap a large amount of additional ASW equipment onto them.
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Post by ramjb on May 21, 2019 4:24:30 GMT -6
Hmmmmmmmmmm does anyone get any use of DD guns before their tonnage goes up?. Personally, a 600 tonner for me is not going to be used for their amazing gunpower, but to drop fish - and considering he's not going to go with short range and/or cramped (because you'll need DDs across the globe) so you can squeeze out some more tons for the main weapons, I don't see what's wrong with that design...
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Post by janxol on May 21, 2019 4:28:27 GMT -6
Hmmmmmmmmmm does anyone get any use of DD guns before their tonnage goes up?. Personally, a 600 tonner for me is not going to be used for their amazing gunpower, but to drop fish - and considering he's not going to go with short range and/or cramped (because you'll need DDs across the globe) so you can squeeze out some more tons for the main weapons, I don't see what's wrong with that design... I often used DDs as gunboats early on, while the torpedoes are crap and msot of DDs die trying to make the runs. I would say they are useful at chasing off other DDs, since you get a line of DDs with your Bs. Often the enemy DDs would close in for a torpedo run, and then mine would respond by getting between them and my Bs. I'm not claiming amazing accuracy, but they are effective for that day and age. Also come in handy in DD only convoy attacks.
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Post by owe166 on May 21, 2019 12:01:58 GMT -6
I gave the revenge 22 knots because i planned my battleline speed to be 22knots. Though to the ones who mentioned it, yeah, Triple expansion engines are heavy and took alot of my tonnage. Though she can keep up with battleline i suppose.
The canada class has already proven how flawed of a build it is. In a war with germany in 1904 one got jumped just after completing its working up by a german CA. The german 9" guns gave her a good smacking and put her right back into the yards for 3 months.
Speaking of 9" guns. Alot of the odd calbres, like the 5 inch guns on revenge, are because of them being of poor quailty. For example my newest crusiers are running with 8"(0) guns that have better range and penetration than my 9"(-1) and 10"(-1) guns.
So is it a good idea to use the worse guns just to equal the calibers out with foreign ships, or use the better quality but smaller calibers?
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Post by owe166 on May 21, 2019 12:04:26 GMT -6
BB- Not bad for a pre-centerline arrangement. In my experience 3xcenterline is not THAT best than what you have, as it pretty much forces you to use a couple wing turrets anyway if you want an 8 gun broadside (10 with crossfire). Speed is far too ambitious and costly pre-turbines for a ship of that displacement. 20 knots is already pushing it with old triple expansion engines, 22 must've costed a lot in terms of displacement. For 20 knots you'd been able to have 6'' secondaries and some 3'' for your tertiary - 5'' only are a bit suspect for close in engagements for my taste. Still - proper protection and good punch, not a bad ship I suppose i subscribe to much to the "All big gun" desgin philosophy. Tertiarys are the first things to go on my designs. Do they actuall any value beyond just more guns to throw at the bad guys?
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Post by cogsandspigots on May 21, 2019 12:13:24 GMT -6
BB- Not bad for a pre-centerline arrangement. In my experience 3xcenterline is not THAT best than what you have, as it pretty much forces you to use a couple wing turrets anyway if you want an 8 gun broadside (10 with crossfire). Speed is far too ambitious and costly pre-turbines for a ship of that displacement. 20 knots is already pushing it with old triple expansion engines, 22 must've costed a lot in terms of displacement. For 20 knots you'd been able to have 6'' secondaries and some 3'' for your tertiary - 5'' only are a bit suspect for close in engagements for my taste. Still - proper protection and good punch, not a bad ship I suppose i subscribe to much to the "All big gun" desgin philosophy. Tertiarys are the first things to go on my designs. Do they actuall any value beyond just more guns to throw at the bad guys? They’re useful during 3 periods of time: 1. Very beginning of the game: fire control is so bad and your guns so inaccurate, you need as much steel flying towards your enemy as possible 2. Very middle of the game: these flying things are starting to get annoying, some high angle 3” guns should be able to swat them down 3. Very late end of the game: automatic 3” aa guns baby
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Post by Procopius on May 21, 2019 12:15:55 GMT -6
BB- Not bad for a pre-centerline arrangement. In my experience 3xcenterline is not THAT best than what you have, as it pretty much forces you to use a couple wing turrets anyway if you want an 8 gun broadside (10 with crossfire). Speed is far too ambitious and costly pre-turbines for a ship of that displacement. 20 knots is already pushing it with old triple expansion engines, 22 must've costed a lot in terms of displacement. For 20 knots you'd been able to have 6'' secondaries and some 3'' for your tertiary - 5'' only are a bit suspect for close in engagements for my taste. Still - proper protection and good punch, not a bad ship I suppose i subscribe to much to the "All big gun" desgin philosophy. Tertiarys are the first things to go on my designs. Do they actuall any value beyond just more guns to throw at the bad guys? Early on, when underwater protection is not what it might be, it can be vital to have a lot of lead to throw at enemy destroyers if the fighting comes to close quarters, as it often does at night. For my own part, I'd be reluctant to go that big with my first dreadnoughts; I try to keep tonnage to 22,000 or so for my first class or two of ships.
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Post by owe166 on May 21, 2019 12:22:37 GMT -6
I suppose i subscribe to much to the "All big gun" desgin philosophy. Tertiarys are the first things to go on my designs. Do they actuall any value beyond just more guns to throw at the bad guys? Early on, when underwater protection is not what it might be, it can be vital to have a lot of lead to throw at enemy destroyers if the fighting comes to close quarters, as it often does at night. For my own part, I'd be reluctant to go that big with my first dreadnoughts; I try to keep tonnage to 22,000 or so for my first class or two of ships. The insanely high tonnage was for two reasons 1. 22knots with triple expansion engines ks difficult to achieve with out large sacrifices in 20-24k tons from my tinkering. 2. Without 3 centerline turrets being available, i wtill wanted 6-8 barrels. I was at war with germany at the time and their predreads were fairly well armoured. So i felt more barrels would give me enough saturation fire to achieve good damage. In the end i went with 12 guns on the hexangonal arrangement. Not defending my design choices so much as im trying to explain my poor decisions.
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swang
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by swang on May 21, 2019 12:29:09 GMT -6
For the Corvette, raise the size to 1600, drop your armor and one of your guns, drop your speed to 15, add mine sweeper and colonial service.
The point is, if anything even sneezes at that as it is, that corvette will die. There's no point in pretending otherwise. Might as well make it bigger and more useful on the campaign map. the 2000 ton FS requirement for 12-15 maintenance is probably about the best bang for the buck. You can use the same class for TP, and it'll do just fine. The bonus is that you get Mine sweeping everywhere, and lots of 2 ASW units around.
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Post by rimbecano on May 21, 2019 12:38:26 GMT -6
Not defending my design choices so much as im trying to explain my poor decisions. It's not a poor design. Suboptimal, yes, but except for the tonnage, very doctrinaire for the early dreadnought era. Compare the German Nassau class.
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corgi
New Member
Posts: 43
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Post by corgi on May 21, 2019 12:46:43 GMT -6
2" guns are a lot worse than 3". Early 600 ton destroyers will never have great guns but I think I'd rather have 1x3" than 2x2".
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Post by Procopius on May 21, 2019 13:42:08 GMT -6
Early on, when underwater protection is not what it might be, it can be vital to have a lot of lead to throw at enemy destroyers if the fighting comes to close quarters, as it often does at night. For my own part, I'd be reluctant to go that big with my first dreadnoughts; I try to keep tonnage to 22,000 or so for my first class or two of ships. The insanely high tonnage was for two reasons 1. 22knots with triple expansion engines ks difficult to achieve with out large sacrifices in 20-24k tons from my tinkering. 2. Without 3 centerline turrets being available, i wtill wanted 6-8 barrels. I was at war with germany at the time and their predreads were fairly well armoured. So i felt more barrels would give me enough saturation fire to achieve good damage. In the end i went with 12 guns on the hexangonal arrangement. Not defending my design choices so much as im trying to explain my poor decisions. No judgement here, I've built similar ships myself! My feeling is just that I'd generally rather have two smaller ships with six gun broadsides over one with eight at this point in the dreadnought building process. OTOH, this will make a hell of a carrier conversion if you still have her in the 1920s.
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