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Post by rob06waves2018 on Apr 24, 2020 14:43:14 GMT -6
I think a gun procurement system would help simulate standardization a little bit too. In the last game I played, due to limited early-mid game budget and the way my gun tech was progressing I ended up with a battle line of 12in, 13in, 14in, 15in, and 16in guns in service before I realized it. Personally I think there should be penalties for doing something like this, but in doing so there should be more leeway in turret rebuilding. The current system in my opinion is insanely restricting. But then again so is making a rebuild last 12 months just to add 5 more rounds per gun of any caliber. It would also be neat to be able to customize turret appearance for game view pictures. There is already a bit of a standardisation effect already through the gun quality parameter. I generally give my early fleet units all the same battery of whichever 'lighter' calibre reaches +1 first. This is generally 13" or 14" but occasionally 12" or 15". This is because I find a +1 13" gun is better than a -1 15" or 16" due to the lower weight allowing for more guns and faster firing. The accuracy is generally better too. These 'lower' calibres last surprisingly long - a 'good' +1 15" or 16" is often developed quite a while into the game, by which point my capital ships all have a standard main battery calibre (excluding legacy pre-dreadnoughts). And after that, I stick to 16" or 15" on my superdreadnoughts because I find they give more bang for my proverbial buck (pun unintended). So my fleet turns into quite the model of standardisation by about 1925. 5" (or 4" - depends on the HAA value) for DDs, CVs and secondaries, 6" for CLs, ~9" for CAs (not a massive fan of CAs late game - I just build them as glorified colonial gunboats to replace my clapped-out pre-dreadnoughts easily) and ~14" or 16" for my capital ships. *Only* 5 calibres outside of oddities like autoloading 3-inchers and the odd design board mandated *sighs 8" on a CV that I can't be bothered to refit. And this comes quite naturally... Though that may just be my subconscious OCD! That being said, I agree with everything ahead of this post about the proposed system.... I really do have too much time on my hands at the moment, don't it?
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Post by christian on Apr 25, 2020 1:50:31 GMT -6
I think a gun procurement system would help simulate standardization a little bit too. In the last game I played, due to limited early-mid game budget and the way my gun tech was progressing I ended up with a battle line of 12in, 13in, 14in, 15in, and 16in guns in service before I realized it. Personally I think there should be penalties for doing something like this, but in doing so there should be more leeway in turret rebuilding. The current system in my opinion is insanely restricting. But then again so is making a rebuild last 12 months just to add 5 more rounds per gun of any caliber. It would also be neat to be able to customize turret appearance for game view pictures. There is already a bit of a standardisation effect already through the gun quality parameter. I generally give my early fleet units all the same battery of whichever 'lighter' calibre reaches +1 first. This is generally 13" or 14" but occasionally 12" or 15". This is because I find a +1 13" gun is better than a -1 15" or 16" due to the lower weight allowing for more guns and faster firing. The accuracy is generally better too. These 'lower' calibres last surprisingly long - a 'good' +1 15" or 16" is often developed quite a while into the game, by which point my capital ships all have a standard main battery calibre (excluding legacy pre-dreadnoughts). And after that, I stick to 16" or 15" on my superdreadnoughts because I find they give more bang for my proverbial buck (pun unintended). So my fleet turns into quite the model of standardisation by about 1925. 5" (or 4" - depends on the HAA value) for DDs, CVs and secondaries, 6" for CLs, ~9" for CAs (not a massive fan of CAs late game - I just build them as glorified colonial gunboats to replace my clapped-out pre-dreadnoughts easily) and ~14" or 16" for my capital ships. *Only* 5 calibres outside of oddities like autoloading 3-inchers and the odd design board mandated *sighs 8" on a CV that I can't be bothered to refit. And this comes quite naturally... Though that may just be my subconscious OCD! That being said, I agree with everything ahead of this post about the proposed system.... I really do have too much time on my hands at the moment, don't it? gun procurement would make it so it would cost a bit to develop and produce new guns so it would often be cheaper to use an already existing caliber than develop a new one for a new class of battleship say you are producing a battlecruiser and battleship its gonna be alot cheaper and faster producing 16 inch guns than both 15 and 16 inch guns or if your super light 18000 ton BCs were gonna use 13 inch guns but your battleships 14 inch it might be worth it to upgrade the 18000 ton bc guns to 14 inch
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geroj
Junior Member
Posts: 76
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Post by geroj on Apr 19, 2021 5:31:03 GMT -6
Really love the idea
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Post by alias72 on Apr 23, 2021 21:47:04 GMT -6
A gun procurement system may also solve the problem with heavy gun calibers finding use in very early dreadnoughts. There is little incentive to research 18 in guns when your existing caliber is 12 in, yet, the game currently allocates gun research semi-randomely.
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Post by christian on Apr 24, 2021 3:05:24 GMT -6
A gun procurement system may also solve the problem with heavy gun calibers finding use in very early dreadnoughts. There is little incentive to research 18 in guns when your existing caliber is 12 in, yet, the game currently allocates gun research semi-randomely. yep while you can use a 18 inch gun in 1902 with high pen and damage its also gonna have absolutely horrible performance for its weight and rate of fire and a very long reload and very short range
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Post by charliezulu on Apr 24, 2021 18:25:51 GMT -6
I'm a big fan of the idea in general - right now, gun procurement is basically just "set 'Naval guns' to high until I randomly roll a useful gun for my capital ships, then set it to medium". There's very little meaningful choice being made there, especially when compared to the relative depth of the aircraft procurement system. The stories behind IRL gun performance is quite interesting and not a linear progression that every nation made, so it's an area that I think could see a lot of future development.
That said, after backreading there seems to be a lot of disagreement about what's a property of the "gun"; from what I can see this is because very few things were actually related to the gun alone but instead an interplay between the gun, the mount, and the ammunition. For example, the British 16" was designed to use a lightweight, high velocity shell. This ended up underperforming and causing a whole bunch of issues, so a new, heavy shell that would have a lower muzzle velocity was designed. This didn't require changing out the gun - it was identical - but the MV dropped and shell weight increased. The same can be said for the USN's 8" guns switching from Mark 19 to Mark 21 SHS; shell weight increased, muzzle velocity decreased, but it was the same guns. Likewise, being a "DP" gun was as much a quality of the gun as it was of the mount, see the USN 6"/47 requiring a new mount to be an *effective* DP weapon despite the earlier mountings having 60 deg elevation. In all, I think that a procurement system should take into account at least the gun and mount, with the ammunition's role also being considered (but separately).As
That said, I think a good motivating example of how a "gun" procurement system would work is to look at the development of the USN's 5" guns, starting from the early 1900s. Starting out, the USN has the 5"/50 Mark 5 & 6. It's a decent anti-torpedo boat gun, but it's a stopgap design. Similar to it, BuOrd introduced the 5"/51 in an attempt to provide the highest possible muzzle velocity; it also faster rate of fire but in game-relevant terms it was very similar to the /50 - maybe equivalent to a -1 to 0 jump, but otherwise still filling a very similar niche. The 5"/25 Mark 10 was introduced as an anti-aircraft gun; the short barrel was a necessary compromise to give the fast train rates needed for anti-aircraft work. The much smaller propellant charge associated with the shorter barrel allowed for a faster rate of fire, but the significantly lower muzzle velocity made it worse as an ASu weapon (range was reduced, and it was more difficult to hit targets due to the reduced danger space and greater flight times). The (famous) 5"/38 Mark 12 was developed in an attempt to provide good enough anti-surface performance while keeping good anti-air capabilities; muzzle velocity was increased relative to the 5"/25, and improved mountings and loading equipment meant that the train rates and rate of fire did not suffer for it (per-shot, it's still a worse ASu weapon than the 5"/51 though). As aircraft performance improved, the US tried to develop the 5"/54 Mark 16 with even further improved muzzle velocity, this time to boost anti-aircraft performance by reducing time of flight and increasing effective engagement range. However, the heavy weight of the shells and propellant meant that the rate of fire dropped off faster than the 5"/38, so while theoretically it was the same, it was more likely to drop off faster. Some of the mounts were meant to be heavily automated as well, but these also proved unreliable.
Based on this, there's a clear pattern of attempting to shift priorities between high muzzle velocity (for ASu work) and high train rates (for AA work), while also affecting things like consistent rate of fire. Most of those are properties of the mount as well - the 5"/38 managed a high RoF and high train rate without compromising as much as the 5"/25 because of the advancements in powered mountings, for instance. However, advances in shells (e.g., the switch between early British APC and Greenboys, or the adoption of SHS, or the introduction of VT fuzes) were a somewhat separate pathway, and thus are harder to include.
Thus, these are my thoughts on the proposed list of things that can be "prioritized":
- Calibre: I'm in favour of 0.5" increments; if people don't like it, they can choose not to use it - I personally very rarely use 9" guns, but it's never really bothered me to have to skip over it.
Calibre is linked to the "base" gun weight, projectile weight, RoF, penetration, etc. same as it is in the base game. Not much needs to change here.
- Weight: Assuming this is the weight of the mounting, this is very important for two separate reasons. Prior to researaching mechanical training and elevation, lower weight guns in hand-worked HA (i.e., """DP""") mountings are significantly more effective when used as HAA. As well, lower weight guns obviously take up less weight, and thus are easier to fit onto a design. However, this should NOT be shell weight, instead I'd have a tick box for "Super-heavy shells" that works like either the box for diving shells/heavy AA shells/oxy torps in the doctrine screen or like the current autoloader tick box in the design ship screen; selecting SHS increases penetration against oblique angles, reduces the velocity used when calculating the gun's performance in-battle, and increases the displacement needed for the magazines.
Increased weight relative to the baseline is linked to increased muzzle velocity, for the most part, and vice versa; higher MVs mean longer, thicker barrels.
- Rate of Fire: Obviously important, with obvious effects. RoF is notably significantly influenced by the gun's *mounting* though, so it exists in a grey area.
Rate of fire for hand-loaded guns increases with lighter propellant charges, and thus an increase in rate of fire correlates to a decrease in muzzle velocity. Mechanical hoists and autoloaders would reduce the impact of this.
- Accuracy: Whereas the other ones are numeric values (weight in unit mass, rate of fire in rounds/min), IMO accuruacy should just be a -2/-1/0/+1/+2 value (or poor, average, good, excellent). Increasing accuracy for a gun with otherwise identical stats was largely due to improvements in FCS and quality control for propellant after a certain point, so it doesn't change that much over time. Accuracy would represent things like gun jump and barrel droop for extremely long-barreled guns, rapid barrel wear causing irregular ballistics, poor gun-laying mechanisms, and so on.
If anything, accuracy is a random parameter analogous to the "reliability" stat for aircraft. It's got a fair amount of randomness involved and is hidden until you do firing trials with the ship. However, it is also one of the areas that can be a tradeoff if you try and request a high calibre, lightweight, high muzzle velocity gun.
From a game design standpoint, accuracy's there to make a meaningful difference between the weight and velocity choice; if a simpler system were desired, weight and accuracy could be removed as things the player could choose to request, with designs either preferring being light or high velocity, but I personally dislike this.
- Range: I would _not_ include this. Range is based on the ballistics of the shells, the maximum elevation angle of the mounts, and the muzzle velocity. Shell ballistics should not be part of gun/mount design since it can change within the lifetime of the gun without needing a "new" gun (see the RN switching from 4crh to 6crh during the interwar period as an example). Increased elevation may be worth including in the gun design, but as a separate thing, or kept as a checkbox in the ship designer. Muzzle velocity should be its own characteristic.
- Penetration: Like range, this should not be included, since it's based on the striking velocity, obliquity, and the design of the shell, not the properties of the gun and mounting. Also, penetration at a given range will increase a lot over time for the same gun, so unless you're constantly going back and updating the old guns to account for new ammo and displaying a full table for penetration at range for each gun, it's very hard to meaningfully compare an old gun to a new gun.
- Reliability: IMO this is a good idea, but like accuracy, should be a relative value. Low reliability guns should be more likely to suffer drops in rate of fire (either due to the hoists being bad like the French 15", the crew getting exhausted like on the aforementioned 5"/54, or autoloader breakdowns like on the 3"/70; this could be represented in a battle event that gives a temporary or permanent malus to RoF) and having turrets getting randomly jammed or disabled without suffering any prior damage (looking at you, KGV). I THINK that the "improved triple turrets" and "improved quadruple turrets" techs do something similar in-game.
Like how accuracy formed the third part of the weight-MV-accuracy tradeoff, reliability forms a third part of a RoF-MV-reliability tradeoff. You can design a gun to push the loaders as hard as possible, but they're going to get fatigued quicker and things are going to break down faster.
- Dual Purpose: I agree that this would be better represented as a checkbox for "High angle mounting" that would mean the gun contributes to the HAA score. The _success_ of a gun as an AA weapon, however, isn't guaranteed by checking the HA checkbox - for example, the French 152 mm/55 was in a "DP" mount, but it had a low rate of fire and reliability despite their best efforts so it wasn't that effective. Ticking the box will increase the likelihood of rolling high on the weight of the gun and low on the reliability relative to if it hadn't been selected.
HAA score would then be some function of the calibre (with high calibres being more effective), rate of fire, weight of the entire turret (with decreasing effectiveness as the mount gets too heavy to rapidly train, and the limit increasing as better power training is made available), and muzzle velocity (muzzle velocity being increasingly important with more AA directors/better directors representing a switch from barrage fire to aimed fire and longer engagement ranges).
I'd also add in a few things:
- Muzzle velocity is used in too many places to remove. High muzzle velocities improve accuracy (not the accuracy stat above, but the actual in-game accuracy) both against ships and aircraft, increases belt penetration, decreases deck penetration, and increases range. Separating each of those out is too many choices for what to prioritize, means numbers change constantly as you research techs, and so on.
- Autoloaders are a property of the mounting, and thus arguably should be included. I'm not sure on this one.
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Post by christian on Apr 25, 2021 3:29:36 GMT -6
Id like to note that this suggestion includes gun projectile and mounting though less so projectiles because Tech for them already exists thus really no tweaking of projectiles need to be done a gun can only be so good if the projectile and mounting are bad therefor you cannot separate them (more so because the guns potentiale cant be used when it cant get the opportunity to fire and when it does the projectile just shatters) in addition to that the in game gun weight has a modifier for the gun mount weight Larger guns and mounts will weight substantially more if the gun barrel is 16/50 instead of 16/25 on top of the more heavily built gun to withstand higher pressure the barrel is also longer and bigger making it heavier more complicated and better mountings also make the weight go up after time so a 16 inch gun is heavier in 1940 than in 1900 Shell weight would be standard and super heavy or superlight both can be chosen in the doctrine screen although both superlight and super heavy are basically straight up inferior to normal weight projectiles SHS sacrificing pen at all ranges for more deck pen and SLS sacrificing deck and long range pen for high close range pen I don't see why SHS should increase penetration against oblique angles the projectile is slower than a normal projectile and thus hits with less energy thus having a harder time penetrating As said earlier gun mounting and projectile are inseparable when determining gun performance a 1890 shell in a 1950s gun wont be any good but the game already models projectile advances and development quite well I was thinking having it be -10 -5 0 +5 +10 as a modifier under the hitrate usually you see things under the hitrate like smoke effect it by -80 or something in this case it would just be a flat modifier As you yourself say range is based on muzzle velocity and maximum angle of the mounts this should be reflected in gun procurement your 14 inch gun in 1910 is not gonna reach much further than 15km due to elevation limits A way to fix mounts with bad elevation you could ask a company come and improve the gun or perhaps there could be an option to request improvement in case you really like a gun which would enable longer ranges the gun in this case before being improved would just have a bad maximum range and the improvement might fix it projectiles getting more range is already modelled by the streamlined projectiles tech muzzle velocity is based on the guns penetration more pen = more muzzle velocity granted the tradeoff here is barrel life and weight (longer barrel higher pressure) Except it very much is based on the property of the projectile and gun if you have a super high pressure super high velocity gun said gun is going to outperform a gun with worse pressure and velocity when using the same projectile Penetration tables would update like they currently do and compare your gun and how projectile tech effects it (the modifier in penetration) to your armor tech it is a higher pressure longer gun means more velocity which means more penetration Which AP projectile tech takes care of but a 650 m/s muzzle velocity gun will forever remain a 650 m/s velocity gun Think of it this way currently in game a 13 inch -2 gun will always be a 13 inch -2 quality gun even if you have maxed AP tech the exact same would be the case here only the 13 inch -2 quality could be SUBSTANCIALLY worse Projectiles will still be updated separately from the gun due to how tech progression works in game and irl so the projectiles would still get stronger but a good projectile fired from a bad gun is still only a mediocre weapon which can be seen again from the 13 inch -2 with good projectiles is still a bad weapon it really is not Was thinking of it mostly as a turret jammed thing as separate malfunctions are not yet modelled in game but low reliability turrets should jam or disable more easily and more often while reliable turrets should be less likely to jam or disable Agree although the gun still gets the DP checkbox it just gets a low HAA value per gun mounted to show its a bad DP gun agree although i wouldn't include weight of mount there are plenty of heavy AA mounts which were good remember heavier mounts usually also get much better powered traverse and so on and a better gun
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Post by Adseria on Apr 25, 2021 7:01:48 GMT -6
This system is something that absolutely should be in the game, and I'm disappointed with the lack of devs commenting on this thread.
EDIT: Also, changing up the systems regarding guns may also be an opportunity to upgrade the system of secondary placement, allowing centreline secondaries.
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Post by williammiller on Apr 25, 2021 8:50:32 GMT -6
Lack of comment does not always imply lack of notice or interest in a thread subject
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Post by broadsides on Apr 25, 2021 13:20:55 GMT -6
Apologies for being late to the party but just a couple of details concerning a few mentioned items.
Barrel lifespan: Naval guns would be gauged and bore-scoped on a regular basis for erosion of the rifling and cracks or flaws developing. A barrel approaching it's end of service life would be known well in advance barring an accident that damaged the bore. In a properly maintained and funded fleet replacements would usually be in production before the needed replacement. A ship at sea would Gauge and scope after every battle or bombardment battle and an excessively wearing barrel would be noted, put into limited use only, or not further used and the ship planned for a stop at a port yard to be replaced.
DP Guns: Quick setting fuses would be a part of DP guns. For AA fire and AA missiles, the practice is not to aim to directly hit the plane. It is to get in front of the plane and explode a 'Rain of Steel" the plane flies through. Range and height inaccuracies are better reduced this way over going for a direct hit. Loaders of shell types that were pressed into AA roles(1900 and before) had to physically cut the fuse for a time to burst that was set by estimated altitude of aircraft and screw in the fuse before loading the gun. Quick set fuses were a simple twist of the fuse setting to time/altitude for AA targets and set to (usually) Instantaneous for HE work and Delay (usually 1/10 to 1/2 of a second) for SAP or AP purpose. One round and fuse, 3 or more settings.
AA Missiles: While there are modern exceptions, AA missiles were generally made to be much faster than jets because they don't have the propellant for long chases. They close the distance quickly. Radar (illuminated) missiles aim to get ahead of and detonate the instant the guidance has a hit, calculates it will miss (producing a fragment cloud at the closest proximity to the plane possible, Lost radar 'lock' or at end of engine thrust (no more fuel. IR missiles chase engine heat and either hit or detonate if IR lock is lost. They usually tail-chase in Air-to-Air fights so a last second loss of lock (the usual result when the two are at closest range and moving fast) will still produce a potentially damaging debris spread.
Air casualties to AA shells and missiles. For non-direct hits (shrapnel damage) WW1 and WW2 aircraft had a better chance to still be able to fly than 1950-1960 area jets (cannon, AA or early missile) whereas even moderate damage to modern jets produce a lost aircraft.
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Post by charliezulu on Apr 25, 2021 20:26:35 GMT -6
I understand that the performance of a gun is dependent on how good the projectiles are, but my point that you seem to be missing is that historically improved shells were supplied to existing guns. The British didn't say "oh, well our AP shells turned out to be **** at Jutland, guess we'll just stick with them for the existing guns and improve it on new guns", they developed new AP rounds for existing battleship guns and shipped them to the fleet. It'd be like if the improved torpedoes, AP bombs, or bombentorpedo techs required that you request new airplanes in order to use them instead of it being assumed that theh air wings just use the new stores. A gun can have awful performance due to bad shells and be fixed very easily by getting new ammo to it without requiring going back to BuOrd or EOC or whoever and saying "we need a new gun" - in fact, I'm pretty sure this is already represented in-game with one of the "our equipment is surprisingly bad" events. Removing that flexibility and narrative opportunity is bad. SHS performs better in high-obliquity impacts, it's one of the big reasons that heavier shells became the dominant trend around WWII. It's not just that they're fired slower, they also perform better. Projectile types does not influence rate of fire to an appreciable degree unless something extremely unusual is going on (e.g., the weird French turret designs with different hoists for different ammo types). It can be separated. I agree that mount design does not. Sure, the modifier can be +/- 10 or whatever, I'm just saying it doesn't need to be as granular as, say, rate of fire or muzzle velocity. Elevation limits are reflected in-game with the "increased elevation" checkbox. If you want to move that to the gun design screen, sure, but it'll be jarring when doing a refit and you have to develop entirely new guns to make use of it. IMO, simpler to just keep it the way it is, it's not taking away any gameplay depth compared to moving the checkbox somewhere else. We agree on range, but my point is that having a "range" value in your request is weird, when it'd do the exact same thing as a "penetration" value. If the max elevation is constant (which it is, that's tech-limited and generally consistent between naval guns) and the shell design is constant (presumably you're using the most modern shells you can, since it doesn't cost you to do so unless, again, you're doing something weird like the post-WWII soviet coastal bombardment shells with 1200 m/s MV), then an increased range means increased penetration at the muzzle, and vice versa, so why have them be separate things? Penetration is not consistent like that though. A super high velocity gun can have _lower_ penetration in a meaningful sense than a low velocity gun because you're lumping together both deck pens and belt pens; at the ranges a lot of RtW combat takes place at, you could end up with a "high pen" gun that actually gives the enemy a larger immunity zone. If you're defining it specifically as penetration at the muzzle, then it's just based on the muzzle velocity, so lump it together with range and call it muzzle velocity. A 13" -2 gun will have increasing penetration over time. Build a ship in 1900, max out AP techs by save-editing, and compare the penetration values, they'll go up. It's not a _good_ gun, but it is a better gun than before. If you're not retroactively updating guns as better ammo is unlocked, it'll always stay a bad gun instead of improving like it should, and that means it'd be just like the current air procurement meta where you're just constantly requesting new designs. "Separate malfunctions" could just be a -x modifier to RoF. There's a lot of things in-game that already act as situational RoF modifiers, so it's not really that new. I was just spitballing. Yeah, I wasn't saying it wouldn't be a DP gun, just that it'd have a bad HAA score. Having a light mount was THE singular goal when developing HA mounts prior to widespread mechanization. Once you have power training, as I said, the malus is reduced, but it's never going to go away - if you tick the "HA" checkbox on a 8" gun then put it in a quad mount (e.g., you're replicating the proposed conversions of USS Kentucky into an AA battleship), it's going to have a harder time to track fast-moving targets than an OTO 127 no matter how far you have researched. Over time, the limit of the "fastest" thing that can be rapidly trained will go up (starting with hand-worked 3", 4", and short-barreled 5" mountings, as was irl, then power worked single 5" mountings with reasonable-length barrels or twin 4", then twin 5", and eventually going up to things like the postwar 5" quad, 6" twin, and 8" DP mounts) but if you go for something extreme you'll still get hit with the penalty.
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ac204
New Member
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Post by ac204 on May 1, 2021 7:45:38 GMT -6
Sorry to join in so late, but I had a different idea on this: The way I see it, a Gun Designer of some sort should take hints from the real world, where a design has some fixed parameters and some fluid ones. For example, when ordering a turret, you would say: "I want a twin 12 inch turret with 12/45BL guns" This would be your most important, set in stone details, to which under no circumstances you would accept a change. Therefore, these should be set in the design stage and not change with development. Just because some engineer thinks that a 12/55 would fly further, you would not accept the change from a 12/45. Maybe that is because you go overweight, maybe your midships turret does not fit between the funnels any longer (see German Brandenburg class Pre-Dreadnoughts) Which values exactly should be fixed and which go to priorities is a matter of debate, but conceptually, some have to be fixed for every System: - Calibre
- Barrel Length
- Number of guns in Turret
- Turret Armour
There might be more, but these 4 define a Gun System and its interaction with the ship and therefore can't be an RNG thing in game. Everything else, whether we take exact values for RoF/Range/... or relative Levels like -2/+2, 0/10 or something else entirely, does not interfere with ship design and can change fluidly. The attachments are my idea on how this Gun Designer could look and what integration into the existing game would be necessary. GunDesigner1.pdf (397.65 KB) GunDesigner2.pdf (400.7 KB)
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Post by charliezulu on May 2, 2021 0:35:06 GMT -6
[...] where a design has some fixed parameters and some fluid ones. For example, when ordering a turret, you would say: "I want a twin 12 inch turret with 12/45BL guns" This would be your most important, set in stone details, to which under no circumstances you would accept a change. Therefore, these should be set in the design stage and not change with development. Problem is, how do you decide what's set in stone? What if the requirements are "must have a muzzle velocity of X because the boys who make our shells and armour say that's what's needed to penetrate the belt of the enemy capital ship/because the wargaming department says that'll give us the needed hit rate at range", or "must have a firing cycle this long in order to be accepted into service"? While I'd personally like something that goes into more detail about hard requirements and works to balance them, that deviates more from the existing system used by air procurement so ymmv if it's good. I think it's worth discussing, but barrel length was by no means the default requirement when requesting new guns of a given calibre. Otherwise, I like your suggestions! I do think the relationships between the priorities could be made more complex, but otherwise it's pretty good.
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Post by wlbjork on May 2, 2021 0:37:09 GMT -6
I don't see why SHS should increase penetration against oblique angles the projectile is slower than a normal projectile and thus hits with less energy thus having a harder time penetrating Not necessarily - it depends on the proportion of weight increase to velocity decrease. From what I remember the increase in weight was of the 20-30% range whilst the loss of velocity was around 5-10%. Case in point: 16" Mk7. HC (High Capacity/High Explosive) shells weighed 860kg and were fired at 820m/s for a muzzle energy of 290MJ APCBC (Armour Piercing Capped, Ballistic Capped - the super heavy shell) weighed 1,200kg and were fired at 760m/s yet had a muzzle energy of 355MJ. It's also worth pointing out newer shells tended to use newer technology, such as the aforementioned APCBC shell whereby the ballistic cap improved aerodynamics and thus allowed better retention of speed at range.
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Post by christian on May 3, 2021 1:08:31 GMT -6
I don't see why SHS should increase penetration against oblique angles the projectile is slower than a normal projectile and thus hits with less energy thus having a harder time penetrating Not necessarily - it depends on the proportion of weight increase to velocity decrease. From what I remember the increase in weight was of the 20-30% range whilst the loss of velocity was around 5-10%. Case in point: 16" Mk7. HC (High Capacity/High Explosive) shells weighed 860kg and were fired at 820m/s for a muzzle energy of 290MJ APCBC (Armour Piercing Capped, Ballistic Capped - the super heavy shell) weighed 1,200kg and were fired at 760m/s yet had a muzzle energy of 355MJ. It's also worth pointing out newer shells tended to use newer technology, such as the aforementioned APCBC shell whereby the ballistic cap improved aerodynamics and thus allowed better retention of speed at range. For a 16 inch projectile 860kg is about 140 kg to 100 kg lighter than the usual round and is in fact quite close to the german 15 inch performance (60kg lighter) Yet despite the fact the german projectile has about 60-80 MJ less muzzle energy it has 2 inches more pen at point blank range against british cemented armor Muzzle energy is not always relevant when calculating penetration the pictures from navweps calculated using facehard should tell you why superheavy projectiles are really bad because a 1000 lb heavier projectile (like 450 kg heavier) performs worse in penetration up until around 12 kiloyards in addition to that the american gun uses newer projectiles also on this note superheavy shells also impact at a steeper angle meaning it performs worse against angled armor as the impact angle is higher unless its angled backwards which is really only the case for turret armor cap and ballistic cap was a thing since the 30s and the americans are known for having some of the best projectiles quality wise as they are almost impossible to shatter and are very strong Attachments:
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