Turret Graphics options

[cormallen]

Hi Folks,

The manual shows some "Special Case Turret Files" including some for open topped barbette mounts. (fairly common in 1890s ships as a lighter alternative to full turrets).

Also there should be some "Generic Shielded Mounts" which were quite common in early cruisers...

I cannot however get the ship designer to access these? Am I missing a trick somewhere? 

[jwsmith26]

The game decides whether to used unshielded, shielded or turreted mounts based primarily on the amount of armor assigned to the primary or secondary mounts. (You cannot assign armor to tertiary mounts.) In most cases, if a mount has 0" armor, the mount will display as a shielded gun, in some cases as an unshielded gun. As you add armor, at some point the visual image of the mount will change to an armored turret. The point where this transition occurs varies by nation, gun size and era and also requires that the necessary visual be available. Sometimes the game will transition from shielded to turreted when 1 inch of armor is applied to the mount. For other guns, the turret will only appear after the mount gets 2.5" of armor. The transition point can also vary by era and by nationality. The points at which visual transitions occur are not particularly consistent between nations, gun sizes and eras, so it is hard to give hard and fast rules.

The set of gun mounts currently in the game does not have a unique visual for every type of gun or nationality. If a particular type of gun is not available, the game will revert to the default set of gun mounts. This can sometimes cause transitions between visual models to not be apparent, but this does not affect the functioning of guns in the game.

The image below shows the difference between British and German small gun visual transitions as they stand right now in the game. This could change if additional visual models are added. The ship used for these images was a 8,700 ton CA, designed in 1900, the secondary guns are 5 inches. 

[cormallen]

Ah, so the only way I can show, for example, 1890s twin 13.5 inch Barbette mounts is by not giving them ANY armour at all? Despite these having massive barbette protection (12"+) of almost their entire crews and all the loading and handling equipment...? This is not great!

Open topped Barbette mounts are super common in the 1890s and apart from a vulnerability to splinters etc(principally why barbette hoods emerged over the decade to evolve into the modern "turret") they presented such small targets (the same size as the actual guns in a turret for most likely purposes) they are not a massive risk factor until proliferation of QF guns and increasing ranges (making plunging fire a greater threat) come along.

I note that the game's designs for 1890 Battleships include obvious "Admiral" and "Royal Sovereign" clones (as is appropriate) that do have sensible heavy Barbette armour (as is appropriate) but are shown with full turrets instead of the open Barbettes they actually had??

Given the improved graphics of the game offers us 20+ different ships boats I don't think it should be beyond the bounds of art to allow the actual main guns to be correctly displayed?

Heavy shielded 5-10 inch guns are really commonplace on cruisers to, so making any 7"+ gun with any actual armour (1"+?) into a fully enclosed turret is also wrong.

I can access the other turret graphics using the "Advanced Graphics (for modding)" but not sure how to get these to replace the actual MA mounts on the design? Is this possible?

Here's a view of the Barbette mounted 16.25 inch single on Benbow (one of the 1889-ish Admiral class, she got single 16s as they were short of the preferred 13.5 inchers) that shows the heavy ring of Barbette armour protecting the loading and traversing mechanisms, and nearly all the crew of course, and how the gun is loaded from below the trunion height: