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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 30, 2021 7:12:10 GMT -6
I've wanted for a long time, to discuss warship design in the game. The concept is to submit your designs along with possibly some requirements that generated this design and maybe, some simple game information to put the design into perspective.
It would be nice to have both the ship design and game view. If you don't know how to capture this information on your computer, I can explain it.
In real history, requirements are submitted by Naval Construction Boards to a War department or equivalent. Once the requirements were approved, then specifications were created by the naval architects, tested in tanks if available and then this specification was submitted for approval and then sent out to dockyards for their proposals. These proposals were assessed for cost per performance, experience of the dockyard and then the choice was made.
A warship, as I have mentioned is always a balance of speed, protection, firepower and reliability. This is the guiding principles of warship design. If any of you have a real desire to study early 20th century naval architecture, I can provide the names of books and in most cases, these will available on Internet Archive or Google Books. They will be free, as the copyright has expired on most. Submit your own books and let's enjoy helping each other build better more efficient warships.
This is a free and open discussion, we can also discuss the real history of warships and their designs. Some were good, others were failures and others were useless.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 30, 2021 14:59:31 GMT -6
If we look at this basic ship design, red is speed, blue is protection and green is firepower. Now where does reliability show up? Good question. I generally raise my research in Machinery, ship design to high. My hope is that this will accelerate this reliability. I also try to buy some better and improved machinery from around the world to expedite this. So where do you start? Well, this is light cruiser, what is its primary mission or missions? This is what's going to help me develop my requirements. I will leave it there for others to help.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 30, 2021 15:53:37 GMT -6
I tried to duplicate a British Light Cruiser Weymouth of 1910, but the game would not allow it. So here is the best that I could do. Most light cruisers of this time period only had deck armor, that I could find. But the game won't allow only deck armor without higher belt armor. So I decided to go 1 inch for both. I went with 6 inches for the Conning Tower like the Weymouth but only six 6 inch guns with 13 x 4 inch guns. I used four submerged torpedo tubes and she has long range for scouting, raiding and other missions. She can still do 26 knots. Remember, while it doesn't have much armor, what are its missions. Well, trade protection, raider, scouting and protection for capital ships from torpedo launching ships....i.e destroyers. I can't protect a capital ship from a 26 knot destroyer unless I can stay with that destroyer.... right. So, speed is more important than another inch of armor. I need firepower and speed to perform this mission. In fact, in almost all cases, speed is the protection for this ship, not that extra inch armor. Was this true in history, you bet your life it was.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 30, 2021 17:30:07 GMT -6
Here is the class of light cruisers that I have tried to duplicate... I should have used British, not Japan. This cut is from Janes fighting ships of 1914 I went back to the game, and tried to duplicate the Weymouth exactly. What do you think?
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Post by wlbjork on Oct 31, 2021 0:07:34 GMT -6
I notice you had to skip mounts H & I as well as one of the 3 pounder/2" guns.
How accurate is the 'long range' option? 750/1000 tonnes seems average off-hand.
Not terrible for reaching the designated tonnage though.
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Post by hawkeye on Oct 31, 2021 1:32:41 GMT -6
I tried to duplicate a British Light Cruiser Weymouth of 1910, but the game would not allow it. So here is the best that I could do. Most light cruisers of this time period only had deck armor, that I could find. But the game won't allow only deck armor without higher belt armor. So I decided to go 1 inch for both. I went with 6 inches for the Conning Tower like the Weymouth but only six 6 inch guns with 13 x 4 inch guns. I used four submerged torpedo tubes and she has long range for scouting, raiding and other missions. She can still do 26 knots. Remember, while it doesn't have much armor, what are its missions. Well, trade protection, raider, scouting and protection for capital ships from torpedo launching ships....i.e destroyers. I can't protect a capital ship from a 26 knot destroyer unless I can stay with that destroyer.... right. So, speed is more important than another inch of armor. I need firepower and speed to perform this mission. In fact, in almost all cases, speed is the protection for this ship, not that extra inch armor. Was this true in history, you bet your life it was. <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> Note: I'm talking in-game, not historical here. Note 2: The designs below, while being from 1910, are from a game with 40% research rate, so it's more like 1905 tech I'm not sold on designing a single class to perform all of those duties. If I even bother with raiders (which I usually don't), they have to be cheap, expendable CLs. Modest speed, a pair of 6" and a couple of 4" guns with minimal armor are quite sufficient for that. If I want to have a CL to escort my battle-line, it only has to be 2 or 3 knots faster than said battle-line. It doesn't have to be able to _catch_ an enemy DD, it has only to be able to stay between that DD and my B/BB. It also needs to have lots and lots of relatively fast firing guns, 5" are perfectly fine vs. DDs of up to 1100 tons and I would only go with 6" guns if those were of quality-0 while the 5" are at -1. Those guns should be the main battery for increased accuracy (it's hard enough to hit DDs as is) If I want to have a CL as a scout for my fleet, it has to be fast, but it also needs decent protection or it won't _be_ fast anymore rather quickly. If I want to have a CL for trade-protection, again, I prefer pretty cheap ships Now, obviously I'm not building all those different designs in a single game. As I said, I usually don't bother with raiders and scout-CLs are also something I don't really see as necessary (I like to keep a few CAs around for that, given they are much more capable of sinking or at least driving off the _enemy's_ scout CLs), so that would leave me with CLE and CL-TPs - which is something easily manageable. Of course, to be honest, I don't feel CLs as necessary on the whole and haven't build one in any of my last, oh I don't know, 10 or 15 games - but that's a different discussion.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 31, 2021 7:25:51 GMT -6
I tried to duplicate a British Light Cruiser Weymouth of 1910, but the game would not allow it. So here is the best that I could do. Most light cruisers of this time period only had deck armor, that I could find. But the game won't allow only deck armor without higher belt armor. So I decided to go 1 inch for both. I went with 6 inches for the Conning Tower like the Weymouth but only six 6 inch guns with 13 x 4 inch guns. I used four submerged torpedo tubes and she has long range for scouting, raiding and other missions. She can still do 26 knots. Remember, while it doesn't have much armor, what are its missions. Well, trade protection, raider, scouting and protection for capital ships from torpedo launching ships....i.e destroyers. I can't protect a capital ship from a 26 knot destroyer unless I can stay with that destroyer.... right. So, speed is more important than another inch of armor. I need firepower and speed to perform this mission. In fact, in almost all cases, speed is the protection for this ship, not that extra inch armor. Was this true in history, you bet your life it was. <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> Note: I'm talking in-game, not historical here. Note 2: The designs below, while being from 1910, are from a game with 40% research rate, so it's more like 1905 tech I'm not sold on designing a single class to perform all of those duties. If I even bother with raiders (which I usually don't), they have to be cheap, expendable CLs. Modest speed, a pair of 6" and a couple of 4" guns with minimal armor are quite sufficient for that. <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> If I want to have a CL to escort my battle-line, it only has to be 2 or 3 knots faster than said battle-line. It doesn't have to be able to _catch_ an enemy DD, it has only to be able to stay between that DD and my B/BB. It also needs to have lots and lots of relatively fast firing guns, 5" are perfectly fine vs. DDs of up to 1100 tons and I would only go with 6" guns if those were of quality-0 while the 5" are at -1. Those guns should be the main battery for increased accuracy (it's hard enough to hit DDs as is) <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button> If I want to have a CL as a scout for my fleet, it has to be fast, but it also needs decent protection or it won't _be_ fast anymore rather quickly. If I want to have a CL for trade-protection, again, I prefer pretty cheap ships Now, obviously I'm not building all those different designs in a single game. As I said, I usually don't bother with raiders and scout-CLs are also something I don't really see as necessary (I like to keep a few CAs around for that, given they are much more capable of sinking or at least driving off the _enemy's_ scout CLs), so that would leave me with CLE and CL-TPs - which is something easily manageable. Of course, to be honest, I don't feel CLs as necessary on the whole and haven't build one in any of my last, oh I don't know, 10 or 15 games - but that's a different discussion. You have some good ideas, and I have copied your designs. I agree that you can't design and build a ship to do everything, he who wilts do everything, does nothing. My designs are based on cost per performance. I don't want to expend a lot of money on different light cruisers. I don't even use raiders much, maybe one or two. I build submarines as they make for better raiders. Thanks a lot for sharing your ideas and designs. We can all learn from these. Keep watching, I am going to armored cruisers next. I am looking at Jane's for some real historical designs to follow. Just a note: I build ten to fifteen corvettes for trade protection and supplement them with older 500 ton destroyers. It's much cheaper in my opinion. I mothball them after building them to save cost.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 31, 2021 10:47:35 GMT -6
I deleted my previous post on armored cruisers. I did this because in researching their design and development I thought that maybe in the game, we don't need to build them. Just build two or three classes of light cruisers and pre-dreadnought battleships. I am asking for the opinions of all of you. Here is a design for a pre-dreadnought - It's partially based on the Japanese Mikasa Pre-dreadnought.
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Post by wlbjork on Oct 31, 2021 11:11:06 GMT -6
I deleted my previous post on armored cruisers. I did this because in researching their design and development I thought that maybe in the game, we don't need to build them. Just build two or three classes of light cruisers and pre-dreadnought battleships. I am asking for the opinions of all of you. Here is a design for a pre-dreadnought - <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button>It's partially based on the Japanese Mikasa Pre-dreadnought. In my last (well, technically current as I've not finished yet) game, I did the opposite. I initially built some lightweight CLs for raiding purposes (6*4" guns, Long Range, high speed to increase chance of escaping interception) and kept adding to their numbers every few years. Once the appropriate techs unlocked I then added some CLAAs. Otherwise I only built CAs, along with BBs and BCs. Some CAs were counter-raiders (initially 7" guns all round, Long Range and high speed) but the majority were major combatants, 4*10 plus a strong 4" battery. Interestingly, it turns out if you don't have CLs on AF then the game will quite happily substitute CAs. though this could be considered gaming the system.
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Post by maxnacemit on Oct 31, 2021 14:21:59 GMT -6
My CLs have lately been CLAA designs, while the bulk of cruiser roles(raiders, TP and fleet cruisers) were fulfilled by BCs. 6'' guns are just too small, I'd gladly build CLs if there was only the displacement limitation. My CAs are mostly either TP/fleet designs(16 ktons, thick AoN armor, and a large 10'' battery) or raiders(long range, 12 ktons, 6x11'' guns). I tend to neglect TDS on cruisers as it's just too heavy. I also experimented with 10 kton 6x13'' raider cruisers in my last game as Spain. I didn't have many opportunities to fight interception battles with them, though.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 31, 2021 16:10:08 GMT -6
My CLs have lately been CLAA designs, while the bulk of cruiser roles(raiders, TP and fleet cruisers) were fulfilled by BCs. 6'' guns are just too small, I'd gladly build CLs if there was only the displacement limitation. My CAs are mostly either TP/fleet designs(16 ktons, thick AoN armor, and a large 10'' battery) or raiders(long range, 12 ktons, 6x11'' guns). I tend to neglect TDS on cruisers as it's just too heavy. I also experimented with 10 kton 6x13'' raider cruisers in my last game as Spain. I didn't have many opportunities to fight interception battles with them, though. The CLAA idea is interesting and worth exploring. Do you have a design for that cruiser that you can or are willing to provide for all of us? My after thoughts were that you would need a dual purpose 5 inch gun, elevated, with AAA director, 20 and 40mm guns. I don't think you can get that technology until 1950's.
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Post by wlbjork on Oct 31, 2021 22:36:28 GMT -6
My CLs have lately been CLAA designs, while the bulk of cruiser roles(raiders, TP and fleet cruisers) were fulfilled by BCs. 6'' guns are just too small, I'd gladly build CLs if there was only the displacement limitation. My CAs are mostly either TP/fleet designs(16 ktons, thick AoN armor, and a large 10'' battery) or raiders(long range, 12 ktons, 6x11'' guns). I tend to neglect TDS on cruisers as it's just too heavy. I also experimented with 10 kton 6x13'' raider cruisers in my last game as Spain. I didn't have many opportunities to fight interception battles with them, though. The CLAA idea is interesting and worth exploring. Do you have a design for that cruiser that you can or are willing to provide for all of us? My after thoughts were that you would need a dual purpose 5 inch gun, elevated, with AAA director, 20 and 40mm guns. I don't think you can get that technology until 1950's. I designed the Chiyoda-class in 1928: (Note screenshot taken in 1956, hence more space, autoloaders available, etc.) I thought I'd upgraded them but I don't have any such designs in the file...possibly due to scrapping the older designs due to the limits to which you can upgrade them. maxnacemit BC raiders? Are they successful in nobbling 20+ merchants per turn? My typical AMC mounts mere 2" pop-guns - you don't need anything more powerful to kill merchants. The raiding cruisers only exist to bridge the gap between the AMCs being ordered and going into service. As such they're dirt cheap in order to get a large number of hulls in the water, plus it matters less if one gets mined or torpedoed. If they get intercepted and fail to escape, well, it's only a cheap CL.
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Post by maxnacemit on Nov 1, 2021 0:33:01 GMT -6
4'' CLAAs aren't my thing, I build Dido-like vessels with 6 centerline twin 5'' DP turrets, 4 AA directors and some torpedoes in case they get thrown into a cruiser engagement. BC raiders are just a way to squeeze some utility from old 12''-armed BCs, and, with floatplanes, CA and BC rsiders can bag 3-4 merchants per turn each. The draw of heavy raiders is an ability to win wars just by fighting interception battles.
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Post by hawkeye on Nov 1, 2021 0:39:06 GMT -6
I deleted my previous post on armored cruisers. I did this because in researching their design and development I thought that maybe in the game, we don't need to build them. Just build two or three classes of light cruisers and pre-dreadnought battleships. I am asking for the opinions of all of you. Here is a design for a pre-dreadnought - <button disabled="" class="c-attachment-insert--linked o-btn--sm">Attachment Deleted</button>It's partially based on the Japanese Mikasa Pre-dreadnought. In my last (well, technically current as I've not finished yet) game, I did the opposite. I initially built some lightweight CLs for raiding purposes (6*4" guns, Long Range, high speed to increase chance of escaping interception) and kept adding to their numbers every few years. Once the appropriate techs unlocked I then added some CLAAs. Otherwise I only built CAs, along with BBs and BCs. Some CAs were counter-raiders (initially 7" guns all round, Long Range and high speed) but the majority were major combatants, 4*10 plus a strong 4" battery. Interestingly, it turns out if you don't have CLs on AF then the game will quite happily substitute CAs. though this could be considered gaming the system. I do the same. CLs are quite unnecessary, due to the way they are replaced by CAs if you don't have any. Here is one of my legacy CA as Germany (this one is on the small, cheap side, as usually I go for 14k tons, 23 knot CAs with an even heavier secondary battery - 20 x 6" plus 12 x 4" or something along those lines - the main battery isn't really that important early on as you won't hit a lot anyway, volume of fire from the secondary/tertiary battery is what counts. Also, being faster than the opposition keeps those ships relevant for quite some time, transferring from front-line duty to trade protection and finally (potentially) being converted to CVLs. As for your pre-dread, while I like to have somewhat faster pre-dreads than most opposing navies, I stick to 19 knots usually. 2.5" of deck armor seems a bit excessive to me, I generally stick to 2", sometimes even 1.5". Secondary/tertiary battery is way smaller than what I would like (see comment about my CA above) Also, I never put more than 2" of armor on my secondary battery, since that allows me to put them on-deck without negative modifiers, improving their usefulness quite a bit. Finally, 3" secondary/tertiary batteries are something that NEVER happens in my navy. Those guns are simply useless. They have no, as in ZERO, penetration, their range sucks and even if they _do_ hit, they can't even give a DD pause. Here my legacy pre-dread from the same game as the CA
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Post by cormallen on Nov 1, 2021 5:43:08 GMT -6
I'm not sure that taking Historical Designs is necessarily the best course if you are seeking to optimise your in-game performance. Historical choices had many drivers - political, monetary, geopolitical and even personal animus amongst Admirals and administrators.
I personally like to mimic history though and happily build ships that I know are sub-optimal if my game navy chose to, or even thought about, if the designs are of interest.
The battle generator is rather flawed on occasion as it is incapable (probably because with "Vanilla" style fleets is doesn't really have to much) of assessing the relative strength of ships within any particular class definition, so if you build "Historical" start fleets of any sort (I've done real-ish one for everyone's navies myself and there are several excellent versions for folk to download via the "mods" section.) you will find some unbalanced match ups happening.
As to sources, there are quite a lot of entirely adequate ones online for most ships these days. That said, I'm a book worm myself (and Librarian by profession) so I do like a good tome to rummage through. For interest (?) here is a selection of my own sources:
Jane's Fighting ships 1905/06 and 1919 (reproductions), 1942, 1953, 1959, 1968, 1974, 1979, 1984 (of increasing irrelevance until the next "Ironclads to Exocets"? comes out?)
Before the Battlecruiser - Aidan Dodson : excellent volume covering everyone's Armoured Cruisers in splendid detail and nicely illustrated too.
British Battleships (multi vols) by R.A.Burt : I own the 1889-1904 and WW1 books. Both excellent on design history and technical details.
Battleships of World War One by Antony Preston : a touch old now but nicely illustrated (with side and top views of nearly everything)
Battleships 1856-1919 and 1919-1977 by Antony Preston : Old "History of the world wars: specials" slim rather than comprehensive but chatty and nice pictures.
Cruisers of World War Two / Destroyers of World War Two by M.J.Whitley : two the excellent old "Arms and Armour Press" sequence. (he does a Battleships one as well)
Aircraft Carriers of the World 1914+ by Roger Chesneau : best single volume I've seen on the subject.
Submarines of World War Two by Erminio Bagnasco : very good comprehensive source.
British Cruisers of World War Two / British Battleships of World War Two by Raven and Roberts : Utterly comprehensive works.
Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1809-1945 by Hansgeorg Jentshura and Dieter Jung : Excellent work covering pretty much every they had, technical focus.
Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships (multiple volumes) : superb books, I'd probably suggest getting these first if you want broad coverage. The national sections are written by different authors though so the style can be variable.
Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War by LaCroix and Wells : Very excellent book on a slightly niche subject, which I notice is now ludicrously pricey!
The Hybrid Warship by Layman and McLaughlin : Good book on an odd subject, not really possible (yet) to build these in game but interesting.
Warrior to Dreadnought / The Grand Fleet / Nelson to Vanguard by D.K.Brown : Covers (principally RN but the Tech and process is near universal) Warship Design and Development from 1860 to 1945 - Really excellent books for an understanding of the technical process of designing warships and how the evolving technologies of this whole period impacted the contemporary choices being made through time.
Jutland, and analysis of the fighting by John Campbell : Splendid, and in published form I suspect unique, record of the combat. Tracks nearly all major hits/damage to major units at least and sheds much light on the consequences of design choices made in warship construction.
Austro-Hungarian Warships of World War I by Rene Gregor : Good little book, I've fond memories as this was my first purchase of a "proper" naval book (cough*cough late 70s?).
Warships of World War Two by Lenton and Colledge : comprehensive register of RN, bare bones technical details but some interesting little photos. The same series also turns up in part works (Cruisers of, Destroyers of...) and also has similar volumes on most other navies. I've got several but rarely consult them these days as I have better.
The Battleship Holiday by Robert Stern : Interesting book on the various design responses and paths taken and not due to the assorted treaties between the wars. Several interesting "Never-weres" from various navies.
French Armoured Cruisers 1887-1932 by John Jordan : Very excellent and beautifully illustrated book.
French Battleships of World War One by John Jordan : as above...
French Battleships, 1922–1956 by John Jordan : as above... a splendid new sequence that includes several others for those with a gallic focus.
German Warships 1815-1945 (two volumes) by Erich Groener et al : really good technical guides and well illustrated throughout.
A whole bunch of stuff by the excellent Norman Friedman... I've got his US Battleship and Cruiser design histories, his books on Naval Firepower and Naval Anti-Aircraft Gunnery and several others. The Design History books are really interesting for the design process and evolution (rather like the D.K.Brown books on the RN) and the Naval Firepower one is very good on the technical evolution of FC tech. Also he has "The British Battleship 1906 - 1945" which is very good.
The Kaiser's Battlefleet by Aidan Dodson : Superbly illustrated design history and technical guide... I'm eagerly awaiting his follow on on German Cruisers coming out any very soon!
and, as an inspiration to writing AARs (and naval alt-history in general) I'd suggest Hector C. Bywater's splendid "Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-33" a 1925 "What-if" of a American-Japanese war starting with a Japanese surprise attack and an attack on assorted US Pacific territories...who knew? (Read by Yamamoto and translated into Japanese for staff reading!). Bywater was a naval writer of the time (and spy obvs!) and it's written in a quite chatty and accessible style rather like the "Red Storm Rising" (or Hackett's "Third World War") of it's day.
There's loads more around obviously but that's most of my current bookshelf on the topic (won't mention the loft!)
Cheers Alan
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