How good are autoloaders?

[snwh]

I don't have much experience with them. I only have 6" autoloaders atm. I've made a class of prototypes, to supplement my current CL's (I got the autoload tech -right- after I commissioned a huge batch of them) but with the few battles they've been in, its been rather hard to tell how much more effective they are.

I find myself wanting some hard numbers. Because its very tempting to design a class of CL's with DP 6" autoloaders, but I have no clue how many dual turrets I would need to compare to the original class's three triples. DP autoloaders are after all expensive in terms of weight, not to mention downgrading to dual turrets. So I would love to hear your opinions on them. How many normal guns would you say an autoloaded one is worth? do you think that changes with caliber?

Also, do autoloading and dual purpose interact? does it improve their AA effectivness?

Thank you for you time ^^

[janxol]

The numbers are in the manual. Autoloader gives a 10% boost to ROF, and additionally when you straggle the target and go to rapid fire it gives a 30% boost. And yes it does improve AA effectiveness if put on DP guns.

Personally i find them to be quite effective. I made this thing, with autoloading main battery (not DP though):

Which is a beast against everything of equal or smaller size. I cant really give an estimate of AA ability improvement.

[snwh]

ah, thank you very much. I really should have checked the manual first. for some reason I thought it wouldn't be in there. Thanks ^^

[warlock]

I think they are pretty effective. I had auto-loader nine 6 inch gun light cruisers manage to go toe-to-toe with the enemies nine 10 inch gun heavy cruisers on a pretty near parity basis. Generally speaking I would win at least 50% of the fights which isn't bad for a ship that costs probably 70% of their heavy cruiser.

[abclark]

Honestly they’re pretty underpowered compared to the real world. The game gives them a small bonus to rate of fire, which is nice, but the Mk16s on the Des Moines class had 250%!! the rate of fire of previous models. They’re a somewhat extreme example, because the entire supply/loading operation was mechanical, but the USN’s 3”/50 had virtually the same increase even without that extent of mechanization. The USN also expected nearly the same increase out of the fully automatic triple turrets planned for the Worcester class.

I’m a bit unsure as to how that should be implemented. The auto loader was really a game changer, but should it instantly render everything before it obsolete in-game? It might be a good idea to have a few different “levels” of autoloading guns that are unlocked over time, increasing ROF and reliability.

[khang36]

May 23, 2019 12:00:24 GMT -6 abclark said:

Honestly they’re pretty underpowered compared to the real world. The game gives them a small bonus to rate of fire, which is nice, but the Mk16s on the Des Moines class had 250%!! the rate of fire of previous models. They’re a somewhat extreme example, because the entire supply/loading operation was mechanical, but the USN’s 3”/50 had virtually the same increase even without that extent of mechanization. The USN also expected nearly the same increase out of the fully automatic triple turrets planned for the Worcester class.

I’m a bit unsure as to how that should be implemented. The auto loader was really a game changer, but should it instantly render everything before it obsolete in-game? It might be a good idea to have a few different “levels” of autoloading guns that are unlocked over time, increasing ROF and reliability.

Looking up the performance of the gun of the gun on the Worcester class in navweap indicates that it's rate of fire was 12 rounds a min compared to the 8-10 rounds on the Brooklyn to add to that the twin turrets of Worcester was 20% heavier than the triple turrets of the Brooklyn and had jamming problems due to the dual feed system. Of course all of the had been improved on with the des moines class so it is obvious that some sort of incremental improvments should be implemented like with every other tech.

[abclark]

May 23, 2019 13:23:53 GMT -6 khang36 said:

Looking up the performance of the gun of the gun on the Worcester class in navweap indicates that it's rate of fire was 12 rounds a min compared to the 8-10 rounds on the Brooklyn to add to that the twin turrets of Worcester was 20% heavier than the triple turrets of the Brooklyn and had jamming problems due to the dual feed system. Of course all of the had been improved on with the des moines class so it is obvious that some sort of incremental improvments should be implemented like with every other tech.

You're correct as to the guns and mountings actually installed. But:

"There were plans made to replace the twin turrets on new ships with a triple fully automatic DP mounting similar in concept to those for the 8"/55 (20.3 cm) Mark 16. These were expected to be able to fire 20-25 rounds per minute per gun compared to 12 rounds per gun in the twin mountings. This project was cancelled at the end of the war."

The last lines above the "gun characteristics" section of that page. The TRIPLE turrets that were being planned were to be essentially a miniature of those on the Des Moines class. With the success and reliability of the 8" Mk16s I see no reason to doubt their estimate for a miniature version. 

[ramjb]

Expectations vs reality is a thing that one should consider very careful. "these weapons were expected to..." sounds very nice but there are very serious practical issues one has to solve, many of them unforeseen, when dealing with engineering challenges.

Worcester is actually a good instance. The guns fell short in most specs to what they were expected to do since first proposed in 1940. Their mounts were also quite problematic, as others have mentioned. Obviously that was not what they "were expected to..." but is what in the end came out of it. One has to be quite careful with "what if weapons" that "were supposed to" do something. Expectations in general are one thing - realities are a different one . Sometimes realities will match predictions with no big problems. Others (most of them) there will be very serious unforeseen obstacles in the way, and/or the end result won't perform as well as expected initially.

Honestly they’re pretty underpowered compared to the real world. The game gives them a small bonus to rate of fire, which is nice, but the Mk16s on the Des Moines class had 250%!! the rate of fire of previous models.

On one hand, the listed rate of fire for those weapons (10rpm), and actually sometimes slightly avobe that, was achieved mostly on ideal conditions. On practical terms is a whole different thing, and probably would've been lower for many reasons (pure logistical ones not being the slightest, at a rate of 10rpm a Des Moines would've ran out of ammo in 15 minutes!).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying the capabilities of those guns (probably the best engineered big guns ever to be taken to sea, in fact). It's just that one thing is the theoretical rate of fire, another the practical you'd keep in battle not only because of the fact that, well, you're not in a target range but in battle for one, but also because you don't want your magazines to go empty in 15 minutes flat .