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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 13, 2021 12:13:42 GMT -6
The 16 inch guns that are installed have a penetration of a 13.5 inch belt at 16,000 yards. Now the question is, is that the battle range of your games. If it isn't then you should increase the belt to at least 15 inches. You should match the belt and deck penetration of the guns installed on your ship to the estimated range you will be engaging your opponent. Be sure that during battle, to stay at a greater range than that penetration.
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 10:47:26 GMT -6
So taking the collective advice I've made some changes.  Firstly I cut 2 guns from the main armament. I considered the triple arrangement with 6 in front and 3 in back but as I've yet to unlock improved triple turrets and wasn't sure if the tech simply made it available to existing triples or only for new or redesigned ships after the tech was unlocked and that cutting the additional gun down to 8 gave me even more weight to use for armor I decided to go with that as 8 should be more than sufficient. I also got rid of my tertiary and reduced deck, turret top, and conning tower armor. All of those changes made it possible for me to bump both my belt and turret armor up to more reasonable levels. Also allowed me to add 10 rounds per gun and add a few extra secondaries and leave a little bit of room to continue to improve my fire control as new tech allows in a few years. Better?  |
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 14, 2021 11:07:02 GMT -6
So taking the collective advice I've made some changes. Firstly I cut 2 guns from the main armament. I considered the triple arrangement with 6 in front and 3 in back but as I've yet to unlock improved triple turrets and wasn't sure if the tech simply made it available to existing triples or only for new or redesigned ships after the tech was unlocked and that cutting the additional gun down to 8 gave me even more weight to use for armor I decided to go with that as 8 should be more than sufficient. I also got rid of my tertiary and reduced deck, turret top, and conning tower armor. All of those changes made it possible for me to bump both my belt and turret armor up to more reasonable levels. Also allowed me to add 10 rounds per gun and add a few extra secondaries and leave a little bit of room to continue to improve my fire control as new tech allows in a few years. Better? Just some comments: 1. With 16 inch guns, you will be firing and fired at long range with plunging fire. The number hits will be reduced, so reduce your conning tower armor. It does not need to be 10 inches. Try 6 inches, that should be fine. Reduce your turret armor by half and increase the turret top. Same reason: plunging fire. 2 Move to 6 inch guns, 4 inch guns are not usable. You want to engage the cruiser/destroyers at a greater range to stay out of torpedo range. 8 inch would be better. 3. Reduce your FC positions to 2, that's all you will need. 4. Increase your deck armor based on the 16 inch guns you are using, check the gun data for the deck they will be penetrating and the range. 5. Increase the rnds. per gun to at least 150. At the ranges for the 16 inch guns, you will be getting less hits per salvo, you will need more rnds. Keep in mind, that you will be firing 8 shells per salvo. With 110 rounds, you will only get about 14 salvos. With 14 salvos, you might get one or two hits if you are very lucky. Initially, you might not get any. If you move to 150 rnds, you will get 19 salvos and you might get seven hits, that's better. |
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 14, 2021 11:25:19 GMT -6
So taking the collective advice I've made some changes. Firstly I cut 2 guns from the main armament. I considered the triple arrangement with 6 in front and 3 in back but as I've yet to unlock improved triple turrets and wasn't sure if the tech simply made it available to existing triples or only for new or redesigned ships after the tech was unlocked and that cutting the additional gun down to 8 gave me even more weight to use for armor I decided to go with that as 8 should be more than sufficient. I also got rid of my tertiary and reduced deck, turret top, and conning tower armor. All of those changes made it possible for me to bump both my belt and turret armor up to more reasonable levels. Also allowed me to add 10 rounds per gun and add a few extra secondaries and leave a little bit of room to continue to improve my fire control as new tech allows in a few years. Better? Just some comments: 1. With 16 inch guns, you will be firing and fired at long range with plunging fire. The number hits will be reduced, so reduce your conning tower armor. It does not need to be 10 inches. Try 6 inches, that should be fine. Reduce your turret armor by half and increase the turret top. Same reason: plunging fire. 2 Move to 6 inch guns, 4 inch guns are not usable. You want to engage the cruiser/destroyers at a greater range to stay out of torpedo range. 8 inch would be better. 3. Reduce your FC positions to 2, that's all you will need. 4. Increase your deck armor based on the 16 inch guns you are using, check the gun data for the deck they will be penetrating and the range. 5. Increase the rnds. per gun to at least 150. At the ranges for the 16 inch guns, you will be getting less hits per salvo, you will need more rnds. Keep in mind, that you will be firing 8 shells per salvo. With 110 rounds, you will only get about 14 salvos. With 14 salvos, you might get one or two hits if you are very lucky. Initially, you might not get any. If you move to 150 rnds, you will get 19 salvos and you might get seven hits, that's better. |
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 11:43:57 GMT -6
Getting conflicting advice now.  Couple others were suggesting my baseline turret armor should be at least 16" but potentially even 17". What you're saying definitely makes sense with the plunging fire but I definitely can't increase deck or turret top armor without significantly reducing turret armor itself which you say to do but others suggesting my original 14" wasn't good enough. Bare in mind that this is still early in the game and far exceeds anything anyone else is building. Most are still building actual dreadnaught configurations and have only just begun to build ships with better armaments than 12". There are a few newer enemy ships coming out with 14" and 15" but they're all new and building. The most heavily armored ship I've seen is 14" belt and I think 2 1/2 inch deck. My plan is to engage at closer range (12k-16k yds) with her in the early years because their guns won't be able to penetrate my armor the way I can theirs and gradually pushing the engage distances out further as their own armaments increase in size and my fire control improves. Reducing my deck and turret tops hurt there but I can always add more to those in a retrofit later. I can understand what you're saying about improving my secondary, but I was mostly intending them to be converted to duel purpose rather than for their combat ability. Upgrading to 6" also requires a lot of weight to do especially considering I'd need to actually add secondary armor at that point. Also what you're saying with salvos doesn't make any sense to me. Isn't the number reflective of rounds per gun? In that case it wouldn't matter how many guns I actually have, it's 110 rounds for each one so potentially 110 salvos. Am I mistaken on something here? Also it costs 90 weight for each increase of 5 rounds so 700 extra weight to get it to 150 and I'm unsure where I'd be able to get that from. Removing a full inch of turret armor lets me increase it to 120 rounds per gun. lol Edit: When it comes to immunity zones, my ship as is currently has immunity to her own guns from 12-23k yds and obviously much more than that against the lesser guns my enemies are building. |
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 14, 2021 11:55:25 GMT -6
Getting conflicting advice now. Couple others were suggesting my baseline turret armor should be at least 16" but potentially even 17". What you're saying definitely makes sense with the plunging fire but I definitely can't increase deck or turret top armor without significantly reducing turret armor itself which you say to do but others suggesting my original 14" wasn't good enough. Bare in mind that this is still early in the game and far exceeds anything anyone else is building. Most are still building actual dreadnaught configurations and have only just begun to build ships with better armaments than 12". There are a few newer enemy ships coming out with 14" and 15" but they're all new and building. The most heavily armored ship I've seen is 14" belt and I think 2 1/2 inch deck. My plan is to engage at closer range (12k-16k yds) with her in the early years because their guns won't be able to penetrate my armor the way I can theirs and gradually pushing the engage distances out further as their own armaments increase in size and my fire control improves. Reducing my deck and turret tops hurt there but I can always add more to those in a retrofit later. I can understand what you're saying about improving my secondary, but I was mostly intending them to be converted to duel purpose rather than for their combat ability. Upgrading to 6" also requires a lot of weight to do especially considering I'd need to actually add secondary armor at that point. Also what you're saying with salvos doesn't make any sense to me. Isn't the number reflective of rounds per gun? In that case it wouldn't matter how many guns I actually have, it's 110 rounds for each one so potentially 110 salvos. Am I mistaken on something here? Also it costs 90 weight for each increase of 5 rounds so 700 extra weight to get it to 150 and I'm unsure where I'd be able to get that from. Removing a full inch of turret armor lets me increase it to 120 rounds per gun. lol Edit: When it comes to immunity zones, my ship as is currently has immunity to her own guns from 12-23k yds and obviously much more than that against the lesser guns my enemies are building. I've given you my advice, based on the game and real history. Try different ideas and methods and see which works. One idea might work better later in the game. Good luck. Remember, it's just a game. |
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 11:57:09 GMT -6
Of course and I appreciate you sharing the advice. I'm just trying to clear up areas of confusion for myself. Edit: My current compromise was to reduce turret armor to 16" and conning tower to 6" allowing me to increase turret tops to 5" and rounds per gun to 125. Would love to increase deck armor but each increase requires 800 in weight and only improves my immunity by 1k per 1/2 inch. I just can't find a way to increase it without making cuts somewhere I'm not willing to. |
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Post by aeson on Feb 14, 2021 13:26:30 GMT -6
Increase the rnds. per gun to at least 150. At the ranges for the 16 inch guns, you will be getting less hits per salvo, you will need more rnds. Keep in mind, that you will be firing 8 shells per salvo. With 110 rounds, you will only get about 14 salvos. With 14 salvos, you might get one or two hits if you are very lucky. Initially, you might not get any. If you move to 150 rnds, you will get 19 salvos and you might get seven hits, that's better. It's 110 rounds per gun. If you have 110 rounds per gun and 8 guns, you're carrying 880 shells on the ship in total, or enough ammunition for 110 full salvos (and probably somewhat more combat salvos than that since it's rather unlikely that every combat salvo will be a full salvo).
4" deck armor is entirely adequate protection against 16" guns for gunnery engagements at practical engagement ranges within the game - especially with fairly early fire control systems such as w2c has - and was probably pretty close to being adequate against 16" guns in reality given just how rarely hits were scored at ranges significantly in excess of 20,000 yards in combat.
4" guns are not remotely "unusable;" they are in my opinion one of the three most suitable dreadnought, superdreadnought, fast battleship, and battlecruiser secondary armaments in the game (the others being 5" and 6" guns); furthermore, I would argue that, at least until secondary directors are developed and destroyers larger than ~1,000 tons become commonplace, 4" guns may very well be better than 5" or 6" guns in the anti-destroyer role - a 4" shell might not pack as much punch as a 5" or 6" shell, but it's still potent enough to give a small destroyer a pretty bad day (larger destroyers are more resilient against 4" hits due to their size and so against them I would prefer 5" or maybe 6" guns, but with a bit of luck they can still be hurt pretty badly by a small number of 4" hits), and without secondary directors the secondary battery is under local control so hit rates at any significant range are pretty low and thus a larger number of faster-firing guns tends to be preferable to a smaller number of more powerful guns as long as the faster-firing gun still packs enough punch to hurt the target. Sinking destroyers and cruisers with the secondary armament is nice, but that's not the primary mission of a dreadnought-type capital ship's secondary battery - the secondary battery's mission is first and foremost to discourage torpedo attack and punish light torpedo-armed warships for attempting to get into a good launching position. Additionally, 4" guns are the second-best heavy anti-aircraft armament in the game per gun mounted and, alongside 3" guns, are the first caliber to become dual purpose in the game.
8" guns, meanwhile, would in my opinion be a considerably worse choice for secondary armament because of their considerably increased weight costs, the risk that they pose to the ship when struck by shells which penetrate whatever armor protection they are given, and their relative ineffectiveness against small targets due to a combination of (relatively) low rate of fire and poor accuracy (especially prior to the development of Secondary Directors). Moreover, heavier secondary armaments such as 8" guns tend to prioritize engaging heavier targets, such as battleships or large cruisers, over light targets like destroyers and small cruisers, which makes them generally less suitable as a defense against torpedo threats.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 14, 2021 13:31:18 GMT -6
Of course and I appreciate you sharing the advice. I'm just trying to clear up areas of confusion for myself. Edit: My current compromise was to reduce turret armor to 16" and conning tower to 6" allowing me to increase turret tops to 5" and rounds per gun to 125. Would love to increase deck armor but each increase requires 800 in weight and only improves my immunity by 1k per 1/2 inch. I just can't find a way to increase it without making cuts somewhere I'm not willing to. Just use the advice of the others, don't listen to my ideas. I am done. Good luck and enjoy the game. |
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 13:35:45 GMT -6
Of course and I appreciate you sharing the advice. I'm just trying to clear up areas of confusion for myself. Edit: My current compromise was to reduce turret armor to 16" and conning tower to 6" allowing me to increase turret tops to 5" and rounds per gun to 125. Would love to increase deck armor but each increase requires 800 in weight and only improves my immunity by 1k per 1/2 inch. I just can't find a way to increase it without making cuts somewhere I'm not willing to. Just use the advice of the others, don't listen to my ideas. I am done. Good luck and enjoy the game. Wait, did something I say come off as rude or something? If so I genuinely apologize. Your advice was different from what the others suggested so I really was just trying to get more insight into the differences and wasn't trying to suggest yours weren't valuable or anything. I asked in the first place because I'm trying to learn more about how all of these things work together and there are obviously different design philosophies meant to accomplish different things. I hope I didn't come off as dismissive or something. |
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 14, 2021 13:39:24 GMT -6
Just use the advice of the others, don't listen to my ideas. I am done. Good luck and enjoy the game. Wait, did something I say come off as rude or something? If so I genuinely apologize. Your advice was different from what the others suggested so I really was just trying to get more insight into the differences and wasn't trying to suggest yours weren't valuable or anything. I asked in the first place because I'm trying to learn more about how all of these things work together and there are obviously different design philosophies meant to accomplish different things. I hope I didn't come off as dismissive or something. You did not, so don't worry. My problem is that I study REAL history extensively. But to me, RTW2 is just a game, nothing more, nothing less. It does not and will not represent real history. Sorry to have to say that, but it is true from everything I read on this forum. I just start the game play it and quit. I do not draw any real conclusions from it. I think your idea of trying to learn from others is excellent. Never stop asking those questions. |
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 13:44:43 GMT -6
Yeah I definitely understand it's a game and will never truly allow real world equivalencies but I still enjoy it just the same. Your advice was helpful though even if I only wound up implementing parts of it. But as you had pointed out earlier, different design ideas and try them to see how they turn out. So I'll be seeing for myself soon enough! Excited to have them finish building and see if they'll be as big a presence as I'm hoping they'll be. |
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f105d
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Post by f105d on Feb 14, 2021 13:52:35 GMT -6
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. ![]()  I have somewhat attempted to do a faster version of the ship while keeping the original Super Nevada turret layout while increasing the belt armor.  |
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w2c
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Post by w2c on Feb 14, 2021 14:02:57 GMT -6
Oh very nice. Like the work you put into the look too. I'm curious why the 1" secondary armor though. |
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f105d
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Post by f105d on Feb 14, 2021 14:05:29 GMT -6
Oh very nice. Like the work you put into the look too. I'm curious why the 1" secondary armor though. Mainly weight savings to keep it inline with the original plus outside of splinters, I haven't seen that much armor on secondary guns post dreadnaught at least visually. |
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Couple others were suggesting my baseline turret armor should be at least 16" but potentially even 17". What you're saying definitely makes sense with the plunging fire but I definitely can't increase deck or turret top armor without significantly reducing turret armor itself which you say to do but others suggesting my original 14" wasn't good enough. 
