Group BBs by main gun caliber?

[Deleted]

Apparently the team is busy with RtW and it's been quiet here for some, so here's a question:)

I see the brits have the 15" toting revenge class spread across different BB divisions, mixing with 12" and 13.5" gunned dreadnoughts. As the practical engagement range seems to be capped by the smallest gun in the division, isn't it better, I reckon, to put the revenges together in a single division, like the 5th battle squadron QEs, so that the superior range of the 15" can be utilized in combat?

I know that we can re-assign ships to different divisions in SAI, but what was the royal navy's thinking on this historically?

[randomizer]

During the War, the five "R" Class formed part of 1st Battle Squadron, which retained at least one 12" armed ship (HMS Agincourt) through to early 1917. After this, 1BS contained only ships with 13.5, 14" (HMS Canada) and 15" so they do not appear to have bothered to rearrange the battlefleet into single calibre squadrons or divisions. This actually makes some sense particularly as after Jutland, experiments demonstrated that "ladder" ranging using a "Master Ship" (HMS Colossus with 10 x 12" Mk-XII) seemed to give results that were reliable regardless of the calibre of the Master Ship's armament.

Four of the 15" gunned Queen Elizabeths remained with the Fifth Battle Squadron from 1915 to the Armistice  but this was probably more due to their relatively homogeneous speed advantage over the rest of the battlefleet than to their main batteries. QE herself became Beattie's flagship and she generally sailed with 2nd Battle Squadron when the fleet went to sea and 2BS generally contained the KG-V's and Orions all with 13.5" guns.

The important variables were range and rates of change for bearing and range and for the most part these values can be considered independent of calibre. By late 1917, the 12" gun was pretty much superseded because it lacked the range of the larger calibres but remained in the line anyway. Late in the war the backbone of the battlefleet was 1BS and 2BS equipped with ships mounting only the bigger weapons but the ships themselves seem to have been grouped within the divisions more for uniformity in their sailing characteristics than in their gunnery potential.

The German's deployed only two 15" battleships, one as fleet flagship (SMS Baden from March 1917) and SMS Bayern the former generally leading Squadron I and the latter in Squadron III or IV. Since the two do not seem to have operated together it's probably reasonable to infer that they had no problems shooting with ships mounting smaller calibre main batteries.

[Deleted]

Dec 5, 2014 15:55:52 GMT -6 randomizer said:

Late in the war the backbone of the battlefleet was 1BS and 2BS equipped with ships mounting only the bigger weapons but the ships themselves seem to have been grouped within the divisions more for uniformity in their sailing characteristics than in their gunnery potential.

Thanks, randomizer. I see there're more to this than size.

[julianbarker]

It makes sense to mix calibre. The 15 inch guns are very hard hitting so do you want one squadron that is very hard hitting, but can't be everywhere, or do you want every squadron to have some hard hitting capability?

[Deleted]

Dec 6, 2014 3:57:48 GMT -6 julianbarker said:

It makes sense to mix calibre. The 15 inch guns are very hard hitting so do you want one squadron that is very hard hitting, but can't be everywhere, or do you want every squadron to have some hard hitting capability?

Another good point indeed, never really thought of it like that...

The QEs are interesting ships btw. They seem to be rather brittle when caught in a slugfest but the speed advantage and longer range of the 15" often gets them outta trouble and then some. The R class I don't find them to be that different with the loss of 2 kts, but it's probably due to AI not training crews to +2 status. The extra 20% really dictates better gunnery from what I see. Maybe something for RtW AI, or is this a "be careful what one wishes for" case...

[decourcy2]

I only wish the 15" gun was given a +1 quality like several undeserving German guns were.
One of the potential problems I am seeing is that both sides accuracy is much lower than was the case in WW1. I have fought the battlecruiser action at the Falklands multiple times and have averaged (for both sides) not much over half of the historical accuracy.

In my British campaign i have made it a rule to not even send ships out until they hit +1 crew and still have horrible accuracy.
If i remember correctly the historical numbers were just under and just over 5% for the British/Germans.

I just had an epic battle last night in my campaign; 29-31 March 1915, first full calibre shoot. caught the Germans with my BCs to their South and the BBs to the north, tried pulling the Germans north with the BCs, which worked... except that darkness fell just as the GF arrived! Grrr!! Destroyed the Regensburg with 13.5" rounds.
I did find him again the next day, my fleet was north and maybe 2 miles west of his, he was steaming east. We shot it out for several hours at max speed, but my first division, the four Iron Dukes, was shot to pieces, the Iron Duke going to zero knots, and the Benbow turning back for home and immediately catching a torpedo! She was my only loss for the day. The Germans had their BCs out as well west and a bit south of his line and they tried finishing off Iron Duke which i was guarding with the Black Prince squadron, so i turned my BBs towards the BCs, south west, hoping he would do something stupid but he didn't, the BCs just turned away and the action ended.

Lost Benbow, and all of the Iron Dukes are in for 10-18 weeks of work. on the first day Lion flash fired both fore turrets, but some brave bastard flooded the magazine so i didn't lose the ship. Victoria Crosses all around, posthumously. The other three cats are damaged as well as Agincourt and Erin. Agincourt had my best accuracy both absolute and relative. I scored 28 heavy hits on Westfalen and others of her class were hit moderately. The German losses were 2 CLs and 2 DDs. Bah.

My point is that my British accuracy from heavy ships that fired a significant amount of rounds was like 1.8%. Way to low. No crew was less than +1.

Awesome battle though. Exhilarating.

Mike

[Deleted]

Mike, advice from fellow user, don't sortie for major fleet action until majority of crews hit +2. There's a real difference in accuracy (and most likely damage control).
If that is still not enough, experiment with NationXAccuracy in the Nations.dat file. It should define a baseline accuracy with all ships. Note that you need to change it universally for all nations (for game balance), and only the entries under [1914] work.