|
Post by dorn on Jun 10, 2020 12:59:27 GMT -6
jorsonner If you intend to use your ship as carrier escort (shield) and for long gunnery duel I would define more detail request something like this: Priority can be given: 1. speed, AA guns with secondary DP guns (as reason to be carrier escort) 2. horizontal protection (reason to be carrier escort and specialized for long range gun duels) 3. firepower and vertical protection General specifications: Main armament: at least 8x16" guns for long range fire Secondary armament: best DP guns available with maximum numbers AA guns: 4 AA directors, maximum possible MAA and LAA guns Torpedoes: none (for long gun duels useless and takes deck space) Armour protection: horizontal preferred (against plunging fire and bombs) Speed: similar to carriers Detailed specification can be: Secondary armament: 12x2x4" DP guns (if 5" are available than use them) protected by 2" armour against splinters - ships is not meant to fight short range duels so thicker protection will be not used for such tasks TDS protection: maximum 4 lvl Speed: 30-31 knots, light engines (speed) Torpedoes: none Armour protection: Deck armour: at least 6" (ideal should be around penetration of 16" guns close to maximum range) Belt armour: inclined belt to protect ship over 17000-20000 yards at least (probably 12-14") Armour scheme: AoN Conning tower armour: either about 2-4" or same belt to turret armour thickness (as it is expected to fight in long range duel, thinner could be accepted) Turret armour: 1.5-2" turret top armour more than deck armour, face turret armour at least thick as belt armour + 1" (to have enough protection against plunging fire and bombs and it is not difficult to have enough face armour to protect turrets against vertical hits) armament: at least 4x2x16" guns, but all forward is not suggested as ship should maintain distance thus can be needed to fire only aft turrets
|
|
|
Post by aeson on Jun 10, 2020 14:37:30 GMT -6
Deck armour: at least 6" (ideal should be around penetration of 16" guns close to maximum range) I disagree with designing the deck armor against 16" guns at their maximum range as the maximum range of a 16" gun significantly exceeds maximum practical engagement range for gunnery engagements even with max-level fire control radar and electro-optical directors. Four or five inches of deck armor is plenty for gunnery engagements because visibility conditions often prohibit engaging at more than 20,000-25,000 yards without blindfire radar, maintaining radar contact on a target much beyond 20,000-25,000 yards is in my experience very unreliable and thus even blindfire radar does not significantly improve maximum practical engagement range beyond the 20,000-25,000 yards attainable in good visibility conditions without it, and hit chances much beyond 20,000-25,000 yards are terrible even with max-level fire control radar and improved electro-optical directors.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 10, 2020 15:09:58 GMT -6
I think that the design of the ship should reflect the technological period that the game is currently playing. When you get to the Age of Aviation, the whole game changes quickly. Now you have medium bombers, flying boats and especially dive bombers along with fighters and torpedo bombers. You have 250, 500, 1000 and 2000 pound HE and AP bombs dropped from altitudes ranging from 1000 feet to 10000 feet roughly. You have torpedoes being dropped from low altitude at close range. Your ship should now reflect this change in technology. This was why the AON was developed because naval architects could not armor everything without making the ship far too heavy. So you focus on the two areas of important: Machinery and ammunition storage. You focus on light, medium and heavy AA guns, autoloading, dual purpose. You also focus on speed. The Iowa class battleships were designed after the Lexington class carriers. They had a very high length to beam ratio. The Iowa class were not as high but they were close. They were designed to be able to match the maximum speed of the carriers. The North Carolina's, and earlier ships built just before the war, were 28 knot ships and had trouble staying with the carriers.
Another issue is that you do not have to sink a ship, just mission kill it. I don't see this reflected in the game but I have probably missed it.
Finally, We can break up the fifty-five years of RTW2 into ten year episodes, five of them. We can examine and get an idea of the change in tactics and more importantly the technology.
When you get to the Age of Aviation, speed, defensive firepower, torpedo protection systems and deck armor are the most important factors in the game. When radar comes along, that changes the whole aspect of gunnery. But don't take that too literally. Even with fire control radar, hit percentages were not that high.
You can argue a case for any armor scheme you desire but remember that naval warfare is not just shooting big guns, its tactics and strategy.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Jun 11, 2020 6:30:00 GMT -6
jorsonner Welcome to the game and to the forums, some thoughts on your new ship: - For a ship of that year, I think that 4" of deck armour is too little. 7" is a widely accepted standard, as it is generally understood to be the maximum penetration power of AP bombs, so armouring your deck and TT to that level will more or less neutralise the threat of AP bombs. However, a given thickness of armour is worse on the TT than the D against shells, because it is sloped, so 7.5" or greater is generally a good idea, since it's relatively cheap. - Importantly: never mix two different calibres (second and tertiary) of dual purpose anti air gun if you can help it, as doing so reduces the effectiveness of either both, or of only the tertiary (smaller calibre) battery; I'm sure aeson will remember. But either way, until you have the maximum possible (24) secondary DP guns, do not include a DP tertiary battery. - On the other hand, there's not much need to have more than 2" of armour on your secondary guns (tertiary guns are never armoured.) 2" provides splinter protection for the guns, whereas more than that (as far as I know) is only more effective at protecting them against shells, as DE armour counts for their turret top, and so protects them from direct bomb hits (2" is sufficient to protect from indirect hits and strafing AFAIK, but somebody can correct me if I am mistaken. - AFAIK there is no practical reason not to check the 'inclined belt' box, once you have it unlocked; it affords 10% extra effective vertical protection at all ranges, for free. - While I don't think that such thin deck armour is advisable, if you were inclined to go with it (for example on an earlier ship) then you might well consider choosing the 'sloped deck' armour scheme, as this adds some percentage of the value of your deck armour to protect the citadel. What exactly this percentage is in game is unknown to me; in reality it would be determined by the angle of a shell's impact, but since the 'inclined belt' feature does not take this into account, there is no reason to think that the deck would. Further complicating matters is the fact that two plates of armour apart from one another (as is the case on a 'sloped deck' ship) have less stopping power than one plate of their combined thickness, but might be more effective at de-capping AP rounds. As far as I know, there has been no comprehensive study or comment by the devs on the effectiveness of sloped deck armour, but it's safe to say that it's a solid investment if your deck armour is going to be quite low. - 30 knots may be a perfectly reasonable choice depending on the role of your ship, but because of the way the design speed curves are structured, the cost in required HP starts to become prohibitive in large (capital) ships once you start to push right up to around the 30 knot range. 27 knots is the minimum for a ship to be considered a 'fast' battleship; unlike for battlecruisers, the requirement for this classification do not change over time, so a ship of 27 knots or faster will always be 'safe' in that it will have greater utility than a slower battleship without the normal 12" armour limit of battlecruisers, but possibly different utility from a battlecruiser (not necessarily worse; again, how the battle generator treats these two types of ships is unknown to me.) Either way, it's useful to know that a ship of 32 knots or greater will always be considered a battlecruiser, no matter how heavily its belt is armoured.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 11, 2020 13:15:37 GMT -6
Personally, I would like to see air bases added to the Fleet Exercise list of ships so we could do some real experimentation. Maybe one of you could suggest that, possibly?
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 11, 2020 18:06:03 GMT -6
Anyone got any ideas on how we could include air bases in our fleet exercises? I believe it would be useful. What do all of you think?
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 12, 2020 8:15:39 GMT -6
In my experience with military manuals, being able to insert comments has always been smart. Here is the RTW2 Manual converted to DOCX. Hope it helps. RTW2 Game Manual 116.docx (1.2 MB)
|
|
|
Post by polygon on Jun 13, 2020 14:48:37 GMT -6
Does anyone have a CV design for the 8×8" requirement that *isn't* just a Lexington? I pretty much always use a Lexington layout for my first CVs and I'm curious if there's other viable setups.
I tend to refit them from 8×8" to 16×5" DP in dual turrets once the tech is available anyways
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 13, 2020 15:58:50 GMT -6
Does anyone have a CV design for the 8×8" requirement that *isn't* just a Lexington? I pretty much always use a Lexington layout for my first CVs and I'm curious if there's other viable setups. I tend to refit them from 8×8" to 16×5" DP in dual turrets once the tech is available anyways I have a couple of carrier designs, here is my biggest.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 13, 2020 16:08:56 GMT -6
Here is another one for you
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 13, 2020 16:48:14 GMT -6
Here is one more to examine. \
|
|
|
Post by polygon on Jun 13, 2020 17:46:20 GMT -6
A large late game CL...80% tech rate. 4 floatplanes, two catapults. A tiny bit slower than I'd like, but speed above 30kt is *expensive*. Good AA, good anti-DD, acceptable main armament and armor, good torpedo protection for a CL. Attachments:
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 13, 2020 20:09:49 GMT -6
A large late game CL...80% tech rate. 4 floatplanes, two catapults. A tiny bit slower than I'd like, but speed above 30kt is *expensive*. Good AA, good anti-DD, acceptable main armament and armor, good torpedo protection for a CL. Nice design, should do well in combat. I still like light AA. Air defense is like an onion. It's layered. The outer layer is the picket destroyers, the next layer is CAP. The third layer is fleet destroyer, cruisers and sometimes battleships. Each ships AA defense is the same. The heavy AA, medium AA and the light AA defenses. This is the very reason for the current the MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapons or CIWS; pronounced "sea- whiz". it is a terminal defense system. I don't care what the rest of the forum members believe, light AA guns are a necessity and ever historical ship had them.
|
|
|
Post by polygon on Jun 13, 2020 21:45:47 GMT -6
I do use LAA quite frequently on large shios, but on that CL the primary limitation is deck space. I could be wrong, but I think on a per-space basis I'd rather have 16 Bofors 40 than 8 bofors and 8 20mm flaks.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jun 14, 2020 7:47:13 GMT -6
Just a bit of information. The word "conning tower" in the ship design is actually incorrect. It should be superstructure which by definition is the parts of a ship built above its hull and main desk. On a carrier it is called the "Island". It contains the primary flight control with the air boss and air officer assistant, underneath is the bridge where the commanding officer controls the ships maneuver. The main combat intelligence area is not on the island but below decks underneath the hangar deck, CIC is the term. The executive officer generally is found there. There can also be a flag bridge for the admiral of the fleet or task force.
"conning tower" is the superstructure term for a submarine.
|
|