Best ships and designs

[spacenerd4]

I don't think so.

[oldpop2000]

Something in the manual I just noticed. After the description of Lt. bomb, Med bomb and Hvy. bomb, the manual skips Torpe... and moves to carrier and floatplane. Here is a copy of my aircraft circa 1956. My flying boat has torpedo entry, but my floatplane does not. It can carry a 1000 lbs. bomb and a torpedo could be developed to be about 1000 lbs. There were German twin engine floatplanes that could carry torpedoes so the game should allow us to built this kind of plane. There were others, but the German models stand out for me.  www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/ww2-floatplane-aircraft.asp

[akosjaccik]

In my interpretation it's more prudent to look at the issue in a way that "floatplanes" are not strictly and literally "floatplanes" in RtW's context, but the a/c type the player automatically assigns to "floatplane" slots in the game, and is able to launch them from catapults. Conversely, "flying boats" operate from land bases (well, as long as the game does not include tenders). As such, the He 115 for example can very easily be simulated by simply "imagining" an RtW "flying boat" type to be a twin-engine, torpedo-carrying aircraft with floats.
All in all, if RtW would address the large, torpedo carrying floatplane-issue by broadening the way the game uses the "floatplane" terminology, that would mean zero new gameplay element and a complication of naming just for the hell of it; as long as there is no historical examples of torpedo-carrying floatplanes from shipborne catapults. It would be virtually just yet another PB that would be called differently.

[bobert]

1940s USA game. I built some General Belgrano's. 15 x 6", 3" belt, 30 kts, 9600t CL. Really really effective against DD and also the big CA everyone is now building, although I'm sure my superior FC has a lot to do with that. Considering uparmouring to CA in next class (5" belt?).

[tbr]

Aug 27, 2020 11:08:29 GMT -6 skyhawk said:

Aug 27, 2020 2:37:25 GMT -6 tbr said:

Yes, you need to designate as CVL to get a carrier airwing, but then you also get CVL battle picks and AI. A true "flight deck cruiser" needs CA battle picks and AI (apart from flight operations, but the AI manages that with floatplanes).

So currently the best approximation of an aviation cruiser would be maxing floatplane numbers of a CA and editing the floatplane model to be more effective...

Does anyone know if its possible for float planes to carry torpedoes? I know they can eventually carry bombs but i've never attempted to max them out development wise.  

Floatplanes can carry torpedoes only if you edit the savegame. Then it works even on AV, you can order naval strikes with torpedoes.

[cabusha]

While not exactly "best", I'm very proud of the result.  

6-10-1922, the aging, large armored cruiser Yakumo (accompanied by the smaller Yaeyama scout cruiser) is tasked with escorting a large transport fleet.  Early in the afternoon, spotters call out smoke on the horizon.  Soon the unknown vessel is identified as the Russian Battlecruiser Petropavlovsk.  Bigger, better armored, and mounting substantially bigger guns, the Yakumo is completely outclassed.  But her captain knows his duty, orders full-speed ahead, and swings the ship to bring itself between the transport fleet and the terrible threat closing in.  The Yaeyama maintains distance, as she'll be all but useless.  At ~1:30PM the two ships open fire, with the Yakumo scoring the first hit at 1:34PM.  Despite better crews and gunnery control, her older 8" rifles inflict little damage.  Petro's 13" rifles, on the other hand, are devastating.  Over the course of the battle, Yakumo receives some 10 heavy hits from these fearsome weapons.  The front turret is destroyed, engines damaged, multiple holes opened in the hull allowing the sea to pour in.  Despite this, the Yakumo continued to fire and maneuver to protect the fleet while her damage control parties did their duty to save the ship.  Finally at 4:21, Yakumo scores the last hit of the engagement, and for some unknown reason, the Petro begins to disengage.  Fleet intelligence would later report that the Petropavlovsk suffered from unreliable engines which is why she disengaged.  Post battle, the Yakumo's crew and captain would receive national praise for their bravery and service.  Not a single transport ship was lost or damaged in the engagement.

(Author's note - The Yakumo was my first heavy, armored cruiser locally built in Japan once technology had sufficiently caught up (and I'd bought everything my buddy GB had to sell me, at the time!).  Commissioned in 1907, I'm impressed that a ship that old survived so well against such a superior ship.  That BC should have eaten it's lunch, but the sturdy old girl took the beating and kept on fighting. Normally I would have BCs of my own, but this run I skipped BCs entirely because of the nature of the wars I was in, instead investing heavily in a standard 20-21knot BB fleet, then skipped to a new 28knot general purpose Fast Battleship, first laid down in ~1918.  My dockyards were just too small to build a BC I liked, and I lost my alliance with GB, so couldn't build any overseas.  So my CA fleet kept seeing small modernization refits and continued to serve in foreign stations.)

[f105d]

Depending upon the definition of best for the role it can be up for debate, but it certainly isn't on the low end of the scale.

October 1922, the year has been full of new ships joining the fleet with 5 new Heavy cruisers finishing their sea trials along with 4 new Light cruisers of the Santa Fe Class being commissioned into the fleet. Built with the new twin 5 inch gun mounts used on several of the existing and new capital ships these cruisers are designed to fill several roles an Anti-Destroyer role, Flotilla command, Anti-cruiser, and to replace the aging Olympia (sole survivor of its class) and Raleigh class protected cruisers. With 3 inches of belt armor and 2 inches of deck armor they surpass anything in foreign navies with low to moderate torpedo defense. And another 2 are under construction with a sub-class of another 5 vessels also joining the ranks. During sea trials to test their anti-destroyer firepower 3 outdated destroyers were used as testing targets of which the USS Spokane with great ease dispatched the outdated destroyers. These developments come in time for the growing tensions between America allied with Japan against the French and Russians they will no doubt take up front-line combat against the aging cruisers of the two opposing nations.


(My first light cruiser class of the 1920s to replace my WW1 protected cruisers. Not exactly cheap but to quote a famous movie line "spared no expense". Though these chips are more comparable to a Cleveland class in terms of sheer size and are essentially over-grown Atlanta's. Though I wish in game we had more options for turret layouts. And the follow on Fresno's side by side.

[w2c]

Well this is the biggest ship I've designed yet in this game. As this is the first time I've played to this point I'm curious what suggestions others might be able to make about it. It's still very early in the game in 1914 and I'm using 80% tech rate. All of my other ships up to this point were using +1 13 inch guns. I really wanted to build a ship with 14's or 15's but they're both at -1 quality and I got lucky getting +0 16 inchers so early so figured I had to use them. They take a ton of weight but considering I've increased my dock size every year since game start I was able to build a ship large enough to use them without sacrificing speed or armor too much. She has immunity to her own guns from 17k-24k but seeing as the best guns anyone else has are +1 14's and +0 15's I should be able to effectively win any battle at range and my immunity range against their lesser guns will be much wider. The one thing I'm less happy with is the lack of armor for my secondaries but I figure that my battles will be kept at range for now and when I get the better power train and elevation to eliminate the penalties from double turreting my secondaries that I can just upgrade the ship, rebuild the engines, and add armor onto them then but for now it's unlikely anything else will be able to hit me as long as I'm fighting in good weather to keep the range open. Thoughts? Oversights on my part? Things I should consider and learn from when designing ships like this?


Edit: Can't seem to figure out how to insert an image. Clicking on the link that says it will, posting the link to it and clicking to add it but it's not doing anything. 

Yay! Figured it out. Apparently getting the link from right after uploading wasn't good. Had to go into the image itself after uploading to get a link that could be used. Good to know.

[aeson]

Feb 13, 2021 8:08:58 GMT -6 w2c said:

Thoughts? Oversights on my part? Things I should consider and learn from when designing ships like this?

The 2" tertiary battery is unlikely to be useful - 2" guns have very short range, and because of just how light they are they tend to have quite a bit of trouble stopping destroyers much lighter than the 900- to 1,100-tonners that I would expect to be roughly contemporary with this battleship. I would not recommend dropping below 3" for a tertiary battery except possibly in the predreadnought (pre-c.1905) period (even then, 2" batteries really aren't that worth carrying and I'd far sooner have a 3" or 4" battery), and by 1914 I'd be strongly inclined to have a 4" minimum if I were going to continue designing ships with more than a token number of tertiary guns due to the greater resilience of contemporary destroyers and the increasing effective ranges of torpedoes.

I personally would prefer to have 17-18 inches of turret armor for 16" guns and would probably have dropped up to two main guns or a knot of design speed to get it, especially playing as Britain.

Speaking of speed, I tend to find 24 knots to be a bit awkward, though this of course depends on what the rest of your fleet looks like. It's not really fast enough for working with old ~27-knot battlecruisers or future ~27-knot fast battleships, it's not a particularly significant speed advantage over a typical ~21-knot dreadnought or superdreadnought and can be difficult to take advantage of in a generally ~21-knot battle line, and if you're willing to pay speed's price the window where a 24-knot battleship design is viable while a 27-knot battleship design is not usually isn't that large so it's somewhat often the case that you won't have enough of the 24-knot battleships to really make them worth retaining much longer than the 21-knot battleships which typically preceded them (that said, Britain is one of the powers which is potentially better able to afford to build enough 24-knot battleships in that window to make it a worthwhile intermediate step between the typical ~21-knot design speed of the earlier dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts and the typical ~27- to ~30-knot design speeds of the later fast battleships, and a 24-knot design speed also fits with a more graduated approach which sees design speeds increasing by for example a knot every other design).

4.5" of deck armor is pretty heavy for 1914 and 17,000 to 24,000 yards is a pretty long engagement range for c.1914 fire control systems; it's also worth mentioning that anything short of perfect weather is likely to limit your maximum engagement range to something below 20,000 yards in daytime engagements even if you have a good enough fire control system to theoretically score hits reliably enough at 20,000+ yards to make choosing to fight at those kinds of ranges viable. Planning for the future is all well and good, but this battleship would probably be better served by a lighter armor deck and heavier armor belt in the here and now, especially considering that it's going to be pushing 15 years of age by 1930 and may very well be slow compared to your 'modern' battleships at that point in the game and thus will likely be ripe for replacement.

Relatedly, I feel that 100 rounds per gun is a bit low for a ~20,000-yard 'ideal' engagement range even with much better than c.1914 fire control systems. Hit rates at such ranges tend to be pretty low and capital ships can take a lot of punishment as long as you don't hit something particularly important.

[w2c]

Appreciate all of that! I was a bit iffy on the 2" tertiary myself but figured they might prove useful later after a redesign to make them dual purpose. I haven't played into that part of the game yet and still learning how the redesign process works so wasn't entirely certain what could or couldn't be upgraded. I knew the guns and armor were basically locked other than turret armor. I was basically building her with the intent that even if I closed to ranges closer to 10k in the short term future years, then the armor would prove effective against the weaker guns she'd go up against. And in later years where the ranges can be fought at a greater distance the higher deck armor would be more useful as my belt armor would be woefully insufficient at that point no matter what. The speed is an interesting point, though I do plan to build quite a few within this speed range and I'm miles ahead of what anyone else is putting out right now (all at least 10k of displacement smaller and several knots slower) so I felt it would give me an added edge of being able to dictate ranges against anything she'll go against right now with the intent to redo her engines likely in the late 20's or so to hopefully bring her more in line with anything I'd need then. The way I think of it, I like my reasoning on it, but again I haven't played that far yet or know enough about how the redesign process works so feedback like this helps. Thanks again!

[hawkeye]

The thing that stands out to me is the 2" tertiary battery which I would either drop completely or at least replace them with a smaller number of 3", the idea being to turn most of them into DP guns later on (I find 2" guns completely useless and don't even mount them on my legacy DDs).

Armor on the turrets should, IMO, be at least equal to the gun's caliber, i.e. 16" (preferably an inch more). 

Talking about the armor. The belt armor _can_ be sufficient (though it is quite on the thin side for my taste) since, as you said, you can outrange your expected enemies. There is a problem with this, however. Your FC is Directors which isn't all that accurate at long range. This can lead to to possibilities.
1. You are tempted to close in to improve hit-rate and then your belt isn't enough to keep enemy shells out or
2. You run out of ammo without actually sinking a whole lot (100 shells for 16" is fine for the BBs I build, but those are designed to slug it out at medium range with about 16" of belt again using the rule-of-thumb of armor = caliber)

Now, don't ask me where you are going to free up all that tonnage. Perhaps go with a slower ship, though I suspect going down to 23 knots might not free up all that much. 
Perhaps go with two twin turrets in the rear or how about three triple turrets?

Personally, I build my first couple of BB classes with a uniform speed of 21 knots and only when I can comfortably raise speed to 24/25 knots without sacrificing protection or firepower do I go there.
Yes, this means my battle-line often can't catch the enemy's one, but that's where my DDs come in (which I build and spend like there is no tomorrow - I usually have 2 to 3 times the DDs any AI nation has - and I lose them at a similar rate), that I use to herd the enemy capital ships towards my big guns.

Edit:
LOL, Aeson has already made all of my points and added a few more.

[w2c]

Yeah, I really wanted to get better armor into her belt and turrets, but was having trouble figuring out how I could without reducing my armament itself. I feel the 16 inchers in general were a reach for me at this point and really really wanted to upgrade from my normal 13's to 14's or 15's but the quality was just so bad and I had decent 16's sitting there. I knew I'd have to make sacrifices in order to be able to fit them into the ship at all and just hopeful I can make those sacrifices worth it! Really didn't want to just build more 13 inchers at this point considering everyone else actually was starting to build 14 and 15 inchers. I tried waiting 2-3 years in the hopes that I'd either steal some or just research them myself without luck but finally broke down and tried to make the 16's work. haha. I'm really not sure how I could have improved both belt and turret armor without other sacrifices I didn't want to make. haha. I'm hopeful I can make them work! If not, well then I learned something for next time.

[dorn]

I would certainly drop 1 double turrent and add 1 gun to the second one. It will save a lot of weight for just 10 % of smaller broadside and your forward arc get 20 % increase. I would use this saving to increase speed to 27 even if machinery need to be tuned for speed. It will make ship useful even later. I will probably decrease deck armour as at time ship would need it (bombers) she will be completely obsolote.

Another thing is that I would use 5" guns as secondaries to have more punch and have no tertiary battery at all. Some armour for secondary guns (3") could be useful right know and could be used as reserve tonnage for future refit of secondary battery. Another thing is that possibility of saving armour on conning tower and just have around 4" against lighter caliber and use this saving to enhance turret or belt armour.

[aeson]

Feb 13, 2021 10:56:00 GMT -6 w2c said:

Yeah, I really wanted to get better armor into her belt and turrets, but was having trouble figuring out how I could without reducing my armament itself.

Eight or nine 16" guns is a perfectly serviceable main battery for a battleship; I personally would be willing to drop to six if I wanted to cut costs or push something heavily armored to a particularly high speed, though I also tend to boost the ammunition stowage for such ships as compared to more conventionally armed battleships. If you're concerned about how the firepower of the ship compares with your older 13"-gunned battleships, consider that weight-of-broadside (the aggregate weight of all the shells you can put into a broadside) is a rough estimator of firepower and that by weight-of-broadside ten 16" guns are approximately equivalent to eighteen 13" guns - and remember that heavier guns are generally more likely to defeat the target's armor, which means that the heavier guns are likely to score higher-quality hits on average than the lighter guns against well-armored targets, especially at longer engagement ranges.

[w2c]

Really good point there and I should have considered that. Would have saved a ton of weight, allowed me to bulk up while still packing basically as much of a punch with more ammo to do it longer. Thank you again!