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Post by dorn on Aug 20, 2019 13:38:07 GMT -6
Purely for the sake of experiment, regarding speed. I built the ship capable of achieving 29 knots, armed with the best armament I had at the moment, and it did not turn out to be that very strong. Sure, it fought a lot in ten years and defeated every CA it came across, but those same CAs did significant damage every single time: I had neglected armor too much, and after a few hits the battlecruiser consistently lost at least 5 knots, rendering investment into speed an almost complete waste. But otherwise it still outpaced every other ship, and conceptually, it worked. Those 8 in secondary guns however, did not seem to be of much use for the amount of money and weight they cost me. As a development over this design I ordered two dreadnoughts with 24kn design speed and more than twice the armor, but without wasting resources on 8 in secondary turrets which were replaced by a large amount of 6 in unarmored batteries. This design proved much more successful, both in the role of a battlecruiser and a battleship. It was noticeably cheaper than the failed BC design without all the wasteful investment into speed. From this, I can moderate its speed slightly to produce a cheap battleline BB. I think I'll convert the BC into a CV later, perhaps without even refitting the machinery. Relating to your 29 knots battlecruiser you should give you question what ships will she fight and design her with this in mind.
Another thing is you have main armament of 6x12" which is good for 1906 design however 8" guns secondaries weights a lot and are weakness risking flash fire. And it decrease effectivness of main battery as decreasing their accuracy because of 2 different guns caliber splashes. For the secondaries use 4" or 5" guns against CL and DD. You will save a lot of space you can use for armour.
Another thing is 29 knots in 1906 has no reason, it costs enourmous tonnage and funds and why? To hunt protected cruisers? Build protected cruiser. To hunt enemy battlecruisers that are usually about 25-26 knots? 3 knots advantage is not giving you anything important in battle.
Relating your 24 knots dreadnought it is question why 24 knots, it is too fast for dreadnought and too slow against battlecruisers. Your 10" turret armour is weak. 13" belt armour is quite good and if back up by 2.5" sloped deck it is much more effective. And your belt could be angled to increasing protection further. On other side 10" turret armour cannot withstand much and is general weakness. 20x6" secondaries is questionable as for what purpose. Against capital ships they are useless, against DD they are too heavy and 5" would be better, against CL they are just too numerous they are not needed in these numbers.
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Post by aeson on Aug 20, 2019 14:42:14 GMT -6
Relating your 24 knots dreadnought it is question why 24 knots, it is too fast for dreadnought...
I happen to like ~23 knots for the 1910s-1920s battle line, if I can fit it within the budget without sacrificing too much else, so I'm going to have to disagree with you about 24 knots being 'too fast' for a dreadnought battleship. It's faster than it needs to be, certainly, but it doesn't really look like it's giving up too much for its speed.
Satsuma's design year is 1909; inclined belt is a c.1916 tech. I would suggest that it's unlikely that Satsuma could have been designed with an inclined belt. Also, a 13" belt is usually somewhat on the heavy side and 10" belt/turret face is probably at least passable for a c.1909 design like Satsuma, so while I would have preferred heavier armor on the turrets I wouldn't say that it's particularly weak.
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Post by dorn on Aug 20, 2019 14:51:23 GMT -6
Relating your 24 knots dreadnought it is question why 24 knots, it is too fast for dreadnought...
I happen to like ~23 knots for the 1910s-1920s battle line, if I can fit it within the budget without sacrificing too much else, so I'm going to have to disagree with you about 24 knots being 'too fast' for a dreadnought battleship. It's faster than it needs to be, certainly, but it doesn't really look like it's giving up too much for its speed.
Satsuma's design year is 1909; inclined belt is a c.1916 tech. I would suggest that it's unlikely that Satsuma could have been designed with an inclined belt. Also, a 13" belt is usually somewhat on the heavy side and 10" belt/turret face is probably at least passable for a c.1909 design like Satsuma, so while I would have preferred heavier armor on the turrets I wouldn't say that it's particularly weak.
If 9" is not particular weak than 13" is too heavy. Main point is that ship armour is not balanced.
Relating speed 24 knots of dreadnoughts, you are right. But if we are speaking about creating relatively cheap ship, that this is something that can be easily sacrified.
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 21, 2019 14:11:52 GMT -6
Also, a 13" belt is usually somewhat on the heavy side and 10" belt/turret face is probably at least passable for a c.1909 design like Satsuma, so while I would have preferred heavier armor on the turrets I wouldn't say that it's particularly weak. I don't really see any point in a belt thicker than the turret faces. While a machinery hit is fairly catastrophic in a single ship action, it's not all that bad in a fleet action, whereas a penetrating turret hit carries a significant risk of flash fire even if you aren't the British, and a flash fire is instantly and invariably fatal. There is, to be sure, a risk of magazine hits through the belt without going through turret armor, but in my experience a ship that takes a multitude of penetrating belt hits tends to be immobilized through machinery damage and sink through flooding much more often than it suffers a magazine fire. |
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Post by mycophobia on Aug 21, 2019 14:23:23 GMT -6
Also, a 13" belt is usually somewhat on the heavy side and 10" belt/turret face is probably at least passable for a c.1909 design like Satsuma, so while I would have preferred heavier armor on the turrets I wouldn't say that it's particularly weak. I don't really see any point in a belt thicker than the turret faces. While a machinery hit is fairly catastrophic in a single ship action, it's not all that bad in a fleet action, whereas a penetrating turret hit carries a significant risk of flash fire even if you aren't the British, and a flash fire is instantly and invariably fatal. There is, to be sure, a risk of magazine hits through the belt without going through turret armor, but in my experience a ship that takes a multitude of penetrating belt hits tends to be immobilized through machinery damage and sink through flooding much more often than it suffers a magazine fire. Just like to point out that flash fire is not necessarily fatal, it can just destroy the turret, or sometime also destroy the adjacent turret, but does not lead to detonation that destroy the ship. |
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Post by dorn on Aug 21, 2019 15:33:59 GMT -6
I don't really see any point in a belt thicker than the turret faces. While a machinery hit is fairly catastrophic in a single ship action, it's not all that bad in a fleet action, whereas a penetrating turret hit carries a significant risk of flash fire even if you aren't the British, and a flash fire is instantly and invariably fatal. There is, to be sure, a risk of magazine hits through the belt without going through turret armor, but in my experience a ship that takes a multitude of penetrating belt hits tends to be immobilized through machinery damage and sink through flooding much more often than it suffers a magazine fire. Just like to point out that flash fire is not necessarily fatal, it can just destroy the turret, or sometime also destroy the adjacent turret, but does not lead to detonation that destroy the ship. You are right but modern capital ship has usually 3x3 or 2x4 guns, meaning such hits destroys 1/3 or 1/2 firepower which is quite significant. Penetrating hit through belt has usually much lower effect on ship capabilities. And turret hits are probably around 20 % or even more of all hits. This means that there is not question if enemy shell hits turret but when enemy shell hits turret. |
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Post by rimbecano on Aug 21, 2019 15:42:28 GMT -6
I don't really see any point in a belt thicker than the turret faces. While a machinery hit is fairly catastrophic in a single ship action, it's not all that bad in a fleet action, whereas a penetrating turret hit carries a significant risk of flash fire even if you aren't the British, and a flash fire is instantly and invariably fatal. There is, to be sure, a risk of magazine hits through the belt without going through turret armor, but in my experience a ship that takes a multitude of penetrating belt hits tends to be immobilized through machinery damage and sink through flooding much more often than it suffers a magazine fire. Just like to point out that flash fire is not necessarily fatal, it can just destroy the turret, or sometime also destroy the adjacent turret, but does not lead to detonation that destroy the ship. The event called a "flash fire" in game is invariably fatal (though I guess maybe with the introduction of double turret knockouts in RTW2 those may also be labled flash fires, I don't recall the exact message). I've never seen a flash fire message for a single turret knockout: yes, it's one of the possible real-world events behind the RTW log message "turret destroyed", but it's not labeled in-game as a flash fire. And the risk of a flash fire with the specific addendum "ship blows up" is still significant on any turret penetration, whether or not double knockouts are labeled flash fires. |
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Post by mycophobia on Aug 21, 2019 15:51:13 GMT -6
Just like to point out that flash fire is not necessarily fatal, it can just destroy the turret, or sometime also destroy the adjacent turret, but does not lead to detonation that destroy the ship. You are right but modern capital ship has usually 3x3 or 2x4 guns, meaning such hits destroys 1/3 or 1/2 firepower which is quite significant. Penetrating hit through belt has usually much lower effect on ship capabilities. And turret hits are probably around 20 % or even more of all hits. This means that there is not question if enemy shell hits turret but when enemy shell hits turret. Just wants to point that, based on the hit count in the I&I AAR, turret hit seems to account for less than 5% of hits on pre-dreads. Although this is based on a smaller sample size and is dealing with Pre-Dreads. But it is possible that the turret hit estimate of 20% might be a bit high on ABX ships. I personally still armor my turret at least an inch above my belt, as you said the risk remains fairly high, and even a "turret knocked out" is still quite a significant issue. Regarding turret flash fire, at least in RTW 2 I can confirm that turret flash fire does not automatically lead to ship blowing up, with the message explicitly stating "turret flash fire". (This is a different message from 1 shell knocking off both turret, which can happen as well.) Someone on the discord server noted that this happen far more often than flashfires that blow up their ship. Personally it only happened to me once so far in RTW2 (and I also only had 1 ship blown up by turret flash fire as well) |
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Post by dorn on Aug 21, 2019 17:02:47 GMT -6
You are right but modern capital ship has usually 3x3 or 2x4 guns, meaning such hits destroys 1/3 or 1/2 firepower which is quite significant. Penetrating hit through belt has usually much lower effect on ship capabilities. And turret hits are probably around 20 % or even more of all hits. This means that there is not question if enemy shell hits turret but when enemy shell hits turret. Just wants to point that, based on the hit count in the I&I AAR, turret hit seems to account for less than 5% of hits on pre-dreads. Although this is based on a smaller sample size and is dealing with Pre-Dreads. But it is possible that the turret hit estimate of 20% might be a bit high on ABX ships. I personally still armor my turret at least an inch above my belt, as you said the risk remains fairly high, and even a "turret knocked out" is still quite a significant issue. Regarding turret flash fire, at least in RTW 2 I can confirm that turret flash fire does not automatically lead to ship blowing up, with the message explicitly stating "turret flash fire". (This is a different message from 1 shell knocking off both turret, which can happen as well.) Someone on the discord server noted that this happen far more often than flashfires that blow up their ship. Personally it only happened to me once so far in RTW2 (and I also only had 1 ship blown up by turret flash fire as well) Enclosed you can find some statistics. It is certainly over 5 % a lot. This statistics is done from end of 10s.
You are right than even flash fire can be without fatal effect on ship, however I still consider turret hits destroying them as most damaging after flash fire blowing ship and disabling electricity making ship dead in water for certain time. So turret armour is priority to belt armour. The second thing is that you can increase belt armour efficiency by maneuvers but you cannot do the same with turrets. And as all turrrets are same design versus differences in real history (look at forward profile of KGV vs. other turrets), you can increase protection only by increasing armour.
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Post by ulzgoroth on Aug 21, 2019 21:02:13 GMT -6
I think there might be a case for heavier belt than turret armor on a cruiser that expects to be able to turn away from the battle and disengage if it loses too much of its armament, but will be doomed if an engine room hit stops it under the enemy guns.
For a battleship, though, losing a turret is usually worse than taking a propulsion hit.
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Post by dorn on Aug 21, 2019 23:36:13 GMT -6
I think there might be a case for heavier belt than turret armor on a cruiser that expects to be able to turn away from the battle and disengage if it loses too much of its armament, but will be doomed if an engine room hit stops it under the enemy guns. For a battleship, though, losing a turret is usually worse than taking a propulsion hit. You are right, we were speaking ships. For cruisers and especially light cruiser, guns are low percentage of ship tonnage so armouring them properly costs usually too much. And they are much more expendable than capital ships. |
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