Some super dreadnought designs

[Deleted]

With the coming RTW I thought these could be useful. Well the line drawings at least, as most time was spent on them.

US BBs_L20a_G3.rar (48.95 KB)

(Note most of the ships have turret armor >16in so designship2 doesn't display it correctly. Also they have post ww1 armor so designship2 regards them overweight, but the armor values surely are taken from net sources. But no matter, since we'll design our own ships.)

Special thanks to jma286! The Tennessee and Colorado are from his drawings and South Dakota is edited a bit.



First the standard type US BBs:

Nevada


Pennsylvania


New Mexico


South Dakota



Next the L20a class Kriegsmarine BB project. Proposed names BB Hessen, BB Waldeck, BB Brandenburg, BB Mecklenburg, (from jma286 and I'm liking these names!) BB Anhalt, BB Schwarzburg:



Finally the mighty mighty Royal Navy G3 battlecruiser. Proposed names St George, St Andrew, St David, St Patrick, after net lore.

[oldpop2000]

Very Cool. In that vein, here is my proposed 1916 Battleship:

The actual proposed design exits, but weighed in at 70000 tons.  shipscribe.com/styles/S-584/images/s-file/s584107.jpg

[Deleted]

oldpop,
get rid of the turrets and you got a flat deck conversion!

I suppose the obvious questions are.. 1. why DE armor is thicker than D 2. why it has no torpedo defense... 3. why secondaries has a whopping 16in plate. Basically I think the numbers there are fubar! Liked your "Scotland" class better!

[oldpop2000]

May 25, 2015 3:18:09 GMT -6 skwabie said:

oldpop,
get rid of the turrets and you got a flat deck conversion!

I suppose the obvious questions are.. 1. why DE armor is thicker than D 2. why it has no torpedo defense... 3. why secondaries has a whopping 16in plate. Basically I think the numbers there are fubar! Liked your "Scotland" class better!

I agree, if they had actually tried to build this, it might have been converted to a carrier with a little of the armor replaced. As to the numbers, I duplicated the numbers from the SpringStyles drawing of 1916 and those were not complete, so I had to improvise. I agree, my Scotland design was far more practical. I will redesign my super Dreadnought, just like the Bureau of Construction and Repair probably would have asked of this designer, after they had seen this ship. It is a bit much.

[jma286]

I'm glad you liked my designs! I'm excited to see the new ship design programs in RTW; hopefully there'll be more options for armor and drawing.

[Deleted]

May 25, 2015 15:32:44 GMT -6 jma286 said:

I'm glad you liked my designs! I'm excited to see the new ship design programs in RTW; hopefully there'll be more options for armor and drawing.

jma286, Yes i do and same!

[Deleted]

Adding RN's N3 battleship. It is a monster....
N3 shall take the names of patron saints, and named St Andrews class. While the G3's alternate net lore names are a repeat of the old "I" classes, given the old Is usage in SAI campaigns, reckon I'll use Insurmountable, Invaluable, Incomparable and Infallible, to avoid repetition. Invulnerable and Indestructible was considered but seemed too much hubris:p

N3.sdf (4.55 KB)

[oldpop2000]

May 30, 2015 11:30:48 GMT -6 skwabie said:

Adding RN's N3 battleship. It is a monster....
N3 shall take the names of patron saints, and named St Andrews class. While the G3's alternate net lore names are a repeat of the old "I" classes, given the old Is usage in SAI campaigns, reckon I'll use Insurmountable, Invaluable, Incomparable and Infallible, to avoid repetition. Invulnerable and Indestructible was considered but seemed too much hubris:p

It appears that you are moving the two heaviest compartment; the boiler rooms and turbine rooms aft and according to Naval engineering of the time, that was not acceptable. Those two rooms should be centerline for protection and for metacentric issues. You now have placed a possibly vulnerable magazine in the center of the ship, dangerous IMHO.

[Deleted]

May 30, 2015 12:21:56 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

It appears that you are moving the two heaviest compartment; the boiler rooms and turbine rooms aft and according to Naval engineering of the time, that was not acceptable. Those two rooms should be centerline for protection and for metacentric issues. You now have placed a possibly vulnerable magazine in the center of the ship, dangerous IMHO.

??
It is just a drawing, oldpop. Damage modelling is decided by SAI game engine.

edit: The N3 is a famous historical RN design that didn't materialize due to washington treaty. Just attempting a replicate here in SAI. It is not my personal design. Actually.. my main purpose is to use these drawings for RTW, as the .sdf files and [superstructurex] entries can be opened by notepad and I wager it'll be compatible with RTW.

[jma286]

In my opinion British ship design jumped the shark after WW1, at least from an aesthetic perspective. The N3's, G3's, Nelsons, and KGV's were all hideous designs. As you can see from my avatar, I always thought French capital ships had a lot of flair.

[Deleted]

May 30, 2015 20:08:01 GMT -6 jma286 said:

In my opinion British ship design jumped the shark after WW1, at least from an aesthetic perspective. The N3's, G3's, Nelsons, and KGV's were all hideous designs. As you can see from my avatar, I always thought French capital ships had a lot of flair.

yes yes jma286 recall you mentioned it in the thread. But even now, I need more British ships in the north sea campaign.

An effective tactic is yet devised against it for my HSF



oldpop,

Apparently the G3/N3 did move the machinery aft. The belt protecting it is thinner, but still 12in(iirc)/13.5in thick respectively with slope.

Obviously it is another matter whether the brits had the money to build these monsters but I digress..

[oldpop2000]

May 30, 2015 21:44:56 GMT -6 skwabie said:

May 30, 2015 20:08:01 GMT -6 jma286 said:

.....
oldpop,

Apparently the G3/N3 did move the machinery aft. The belt protecting it is thinner, but still 12in(iirc)/13.5in thick respectively with slope.

Obviously it is another matter whether the brits had the money to build these monsters but I digress..

N3 Battleships were designed with 15 inch plate at 72 degrees abreast the magazine and 13.5 inch plates at 72 degrees abreast the machinery space. However, protective deck was 6 inch over the working spaces. Upper deck was 8 inch and lower deck was 8 inch forward and 6 inch aft. I have found no data on the armor penetration of the proposed 18 inch guns for this class of ship. However, at over 25,000 yards, plunging fire appears to be able to penetrate the machinery spaces aft, and disable the ships forward movement.  As to affordability, I don't believe at 48,000 tons, these ships could have been built during the post WW1 period.

[Deleted]

Hmmm yeah... I doubt 25,000yds will be the norm. Averagely speaking half the time is day on earth and a significant portion of that is with bad weather. From an operations standpoint I'd rather tradeoff more towards vertical armor.
Undoubtedly ww1 era dreadnought lack horizontal protection but I suspect the Brits might've over compensated with these.

I feel 4+ inch for hull and 5+ inch for turret is sufficient based on SAI penetration data. With ~15inch belt one can set the IZ against 16in gun from 15k yds out to 22k and that is good enough. More deck means pushing the IZ further out and not sure it's worth it.

[vonfriedman]

May 30, 2015 20:08:01 GMT -6 jma286 said:

In my opinion British ship design jumped the shark after WW1, at least from an aesthetic perspective. The N3's, G3's, Nelsons, and KGV's were all hideous designs. As you can see from my avatar, I always thought French capital ships had a lot of flair.

I think THAT the KGV class battleships were not so bad and Vanguard was even better (from a point of view of beauty.)

[oldpop2000]

May 31, 2015 0:32:31 GMT -6 skwabie said:

Hmmm yeah... I doubt 25,000yds will be the norm. Averagely speaking half the time is day on earth and a significant portion of that is with bad weather. From an operations standpoint I'd rather tradeoff more towards vertical armor.
Undoubtedly ww1 era dreadnought lack horizontal protection but I suspect the Brits might've over compensated with these.

I feel 4+ inch for hull and 5+ inch for turret is sufficient based on SAI penetration data. With ~15inch belt one can set the IZ against 16in gun from 15k yds out to 22k and that is good enough. More deck means pushing the IZ further out and not sure it's worth it.

Here is the way I view this problem, it’s not heavily into math. A ship is an 800 x 100 by 35 ft. rectangular cube. But in reality, what is the most likely target area that you are going to hit? Is it the 800 x 35 foot vertical section (28000 sq. ft.) or is it the 800 x 100 foot section (80,000 sq. ft.). Combined that is 108,000 sq. ft. of target not including the unengaged side. So, 80000 sq. ft. over 108000 sq. ft. is 75%. In other words, there is a 75% chance of you hitting something on the deck, be it superstructure, turrets or just empty deck. Now, do I need to do immune zone or danger space calculations? You can, but will it really tell you anything different. It really boils down to your priority: attack heavily armored regions from the side where the width is not important, or drop shells down on the deck which is usually thinner, and the width is now important. You can derive danger space using either way. Danger space is essentially the distance from the point of fall to a point for a given height of the target where the shell will still hit the target. At long ranges, the danger space is small; at short ranges, danger space is usually equal to the range to target.

I strive for a mission kill which is easier to attain and just as effective as a hard kill. Jutland seems to prove that case. The High Seas Fleet went out on August 9, 1916 headed towards the English coast, but at least three battle cruisers were not available. They were not sunk but mission killed and were still in port. I believe that I can attain that mission kill easier by striving for deck penetration and superstructure to destroy fire control equipment, disrupting ship communications and hitting turrets to take out primary weaponry. If I am lucky, I might be able to strike machinery spaces and slow the ship down, which will still mission kill the target.

This is not criticism of your thoughts, but an explanation of my priorities in ship design. Psychologically, I would rather have a battered ship, with many crew members dead or wounded, arrive back at port, than have a ship sunk; out of sight, out of mind unless you are one of the family members. If that sounds cruel, then remember that "War is Hell". (Sherman didn't really say that exactly, but it works for me). Yes, it is true that SAI doesn't compute such an effect when a ship arrives back at port, but it would be fun to try it.

Note: In further research,  the US Navy prioritized on vertical penetration as exemplified by their targets, if you have ever seen them. It would be fascinating to know how Germany, Japan and Great Britain prioritized.