Armour quality

[gb]

In RTW2 (and RTW1) armour was Krupp equivalent, but in RTW3 you can have ships with different armour quality, wrought-iron/steel, Harvey and Krupp. Currently it is not possible to distinguish the armour type that a ship has, so it is difficult to appreciate its effective strength (some battleships of 1890 fleet legacy have 18in armour belt, more than WWII Yamato had). Should be possible to introduce in the ship design page an indication of the ship armour quality?

[wlbjork]

Another way would be using the gun data table.

Currently, I believe it always gets rated against the newest/best armour.

I would ask the devs to look at changing this so it also shows your ships current level of protection.

[TheOtherPoster]

I thought that the gun penetration data was related to the armour quality in that ship. So we would know how much armour we would need against guns of that caliber. And as armour quality in the 1890 start seems very similar to the one in the 1900 start (i.e. Krupp), I thought Krupp was also the base armour type in 1890 for all ships, including the legacy fleet (which wouldn't make sense). And on top of that, being Krupp, no compound or any other armour type was possible!

But maybe you’re right and the problem is that the guns’ penetration data are always set against Krupp and we do not know really how good is the armour in any ship. An important issue particularly in the 1890s when 8in of compound are only as good as 4in of Krupp armour.

I don't think the RTW3 manual says anything about armour types, but they were mentioned in the RTW2 expansion catalogue.
The expansion catalogue has proven to be very accurate and lists all major changes and improvements in what is now called RTW3.
Anyway, the thing is that the RTW2 expansion catalogue states armour type will be a new feature: "Ships built in the 90s will have compound, nickel-steel or Harvey armor."
If this is not longer the case, it would be the single one thing that didn’t make it from the expansion catalogue into RTW3.

So maybe you're right after all. Maybe somebody from the NWS team would be able to clarify this issue?
If there are different types of armour in the 1890s, how do we know which of them our ships are using? And if gun penetration data only shows values against Krupp, how do we know how much thick our belts need to be if for example we use compound?

[starsburn]

I pretty sure it models effective armor a 11inch belt in 1890 have the same protection as one in 1940
But its weight will be reduced.

[cormallen]

May 31, 2023 11:46:55 GMT -6 starsburn said:

I pretty sure it models effective armor a 11inch belt in 1890 have the same protection as one in 1940
But its weight will be reduced.

That's certainly my understanding. The armour techs just make it more weight efficient so you can add more. They AP ammo techs push back over time of course but that's pretty much what happened once Krupp style armour took over.

[t3rm1dor]

May 31, 2023 12:32:57 GMT -6 cormallen said:

May 31, 2023 11:46:55 GMT -6 starsburn said:

I pretty sure it models effective armor a 11inch belt in 1890 have the same protection as one in 1940
But its weight will be reduced.

That's certainly my understanding. The armour techs just make it more weight efficient so you can add more. They AP ammo techs push back over time of course but that's pretty much what happened once Krupp style armour took over.

That was how it was done in RTW 1, but it was changed in 2. It is very noticeable in some techs like Krupp armor as pen ability of your guns apparently reduces as it is compare to current tech.

[cormallen]

May 31, 2023 12:56:26 GMT -6 t3rm1dor said:

May 31, 2023 12:32:57 GMT -6 cormallen said:

That's certainly my understanding. The armour techs just make it more weight efficient so you can add more. They AP ammo techs push back over time of course but that's pretty much what happened once Krupp style armour took over.

That was how it was done in RTW 1, but it was changed in 2. It is very noticeable in some techs like Krupp armor as pen ability of your guns apparently reduces as it is compare to current tech.

Yep, mildly annoyed that I didn't check that experimentally before! Unfortunately this makes it even worse for anyone interested in making this "Naval Warfare Simulation" operate nearer to reality as your "very noticeably" only amounts to less than a 15% improvement for IG Krupp over basic (presumably Compound/Steel for 1890?) when IRL the improvement was closer to 100% !

This massive leap is WHY the RN (amongst others) basically stopped trying to make Armoured Cruisers for years (as the REAL pre-Krupp protection simply wasn't worth the effort), it's WHY the Battleship designs changed between 1894 and 1901 and WHY "Semi-Dreadnoughts" were ever designed by half the world's navies at all.

As the relative armour penetration improvements are buried in the game's coding we can only try and mimic this impact by artificially underarmouring our designs, and detaching armour weight from quality (though technically obviously more accurate) makes that incrementally (though it's truly hard to spot with the more incremental boosts that most of the armour techs give) harder.

RTW3 has tried to make the 1890s revolution in armour metallurgy more significant but with only a 15% increase has simply not been brave enough.

The phase-shift from the Ironclad heavy navies of 1890 (which the game largely ignores with the current set of legacy types it generates) to the true Pre-Dreadnought types dominating the world's yards within a bare decade is largely down to the huge impact of improved armour technology, this combined with the emergence of quick-firing 6-ish inch guns driving a need for more complete armour schemes (Compound armour SHOULD be too inefficient to allow much more than the vitals to get meaningful protection - thus all those c.18" Citadels schemes which ARE REALLY only worth c.9" of Krupp) until parallel improvements in Fire Control and more rapid reloading of heavy guns make true All Big Gun types the next logical step in design. Historically there was a LOT of push back within the RN establishment against "Dreadnought" as making the RNs massive numerical advantage in Battleships (grown up over the decade of chasing the Two Power Standard mandated by the 1889 Naval Defence Act) obsolete seemed utter madness but these sea officers were unable to see just how obsolete even the 1892-5 types had become. Too close to the problem, and trained up in the Ironclad age (where technology had relatively stagnated for 20 years and the Warrior herself was still considered worth keeping around nearly 30 years after she was designed) they missed the consequences of the changes happening around them.

The only real point in including an 1890 Start option in the game is to explore THIS naval revolution. If the impacts are muffled by timidity (not wishing to "Upset people" as I've heard it?)

The game's strengths are in it's exploration of the interaction in naval history between technology and tactics. How "learning how to hits things better" meets up with advances in gun and armour technology to make Jutland happen!

I will continue to try and make this excellent game better in any way I can but it is frustrating sometimes so apologies for the rant/lecture.

[wlbjork]

May 31, 2023 6:31:17 GMT -6 TheOtherPoster said:

I thought that the gun penetration data was related to the armour quality in that ship. So we would know how much armour we would need against guns of that caliber. And as armour quality in the 1890 start seems very similar to the one in the 1900 start (i.e. Krupp), I thought Krupp was also the base armour type in 1890 for all ships, including the legacy fleet (which wouldn't make sense). And on top of that, being Krupp, no compound or any other armour type was possible!

Re-checked this earlier. Around 1916 I compared a refit of my B dating back to ~1904 to a new-build. The penetration table was the same in both cases, so they only test against the latest armour.

[axe99]

I'd definitely be a fan of clarification on armour (some kind of "original Krupp equivalent rating" for example - "original being important, given that Krupp-type armour improved even before WW1 (outside of Germany) and everywhere after WW1. Using "Figure of Merit" could be one way of approaching it that uses nomenclature used elsewhere for rating armour strength - but this might be potentially confusing given it uses wrought iron as a base.

[TheOtherPoster]

If RTW3 is like RTW2, it doesn't use the equivalent-thickness armor system from RTW1: instead it uses an 'actual' thickness with hidden resistance multiplier.

Back when RTW2 came out Adseria asked if we could know what that resistance multiplier was, but was told that they want to keep the actual effectiveness of different armour types somewhat hidden from the players, for realism. Maybe at the time it was OK, as we were starting with Krupp and overtime armour became better but not for a huge margin. We all know that 11in of 1900 armour is not as good as 11in of 1940 armour, but not too inferior either. We could work with it.

But in the 1890 start things are different. Historically, to get in 1890 a belt equivalent to 9in of Krupp, we would need 18in of the best armour available at the time.

If penetration values reflect 1900 Krupp standard, not our actual armour quality, it follows that the usual checks we do to find out "how much thickness I need to give to my ship to withstand guns of similar caliber at combat ranges" are meaningless in 1890. If we check our guns we may think our 12in guns can penetrate 6in of armour at combat ranges (because penetration data is shown against Krupp). But they could actually be penetrating 14in of 1890 armour (compound), rendering checking guns penetration to decide our ship's armour thickness a futile exercise in 1890.

I got the feeling that they avoided this issue making armour in 1890 not as inferior as it was historically the case but just a little worse than 1900 Krupp. So our 8in belt form 1890 is not equivalent to 4in in 1900 armour but 7in or so? Maybe somebody from the NWS team would let us know if that's the case? Is armour in 1890 as bad as it was historically or just a little worse than 1900 Krupp? So we can have a rough idea if we will need to give our ships very thick belts or not in 1890. 

 

[williammiller]

These are relevant documents in this discussion:

www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-USN-Armour1937.htm

www.combinedfleet.com/metalprp.htm

IIRC compound (or slightly later nickel-steel) armor in the game is about 70% as effective as Krupp.

[akd]

Jun 2, 2023 9:10:05 GMT -6 williammiller said:

These are relevant documents in this discussion:

www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-USN-Armour1937.htm

www.combinedfleet.com/metalprp.htm

IIRC compound (or slightly later nickel-steel) armor in the game is about 70% as effective as Krupp.

So 10-inches of armor for an 1890 start before development of Harvey steel is equivalent to approx 7-inches of Krupp (then presumably approx 8.5 inches after you gain Harvey, but obviously only on newly built ships), but the gun penetration tables are always given in Krupp equivalents regardless of your current armor development level? I.e. you can only really trust your immune zone information once you have Krupp armor developed?

[cormallen]

Jun 2, 2023 9:10:05 GMT -6 williammiller said:

These are relevant documents in this discussion:

www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-USN-Armour1937.htm

www.combinedfleet.com/metalprp.htm

IIRC compound (or slightly later nickel-steel) armor in the game is about 70% as effective as Krupp.

see also : eugeneleeslover.com/ARMOR-CHAPTER-XII-A.html

Plus "Warrior to Dreadnought: Warship development 1860-1905 - D.K.Brown"


So the game ignores all the actual "Iron"-clads that made up the majority of the warships afloat in 1890 plus makes Compound era stuff significantly better than it was? (IRL Harvey about c.80% Krupp and Compound c.50% or so?)

I presume this was avoid players having to actually experience the "block obsolescence" of the fleets that actually made this decade so full of change? Currently (and I know this is early days) most of the auto-gen navies have a late 1880s Battleline (so little of the older stuff that made up so much of the real forces at this time) supported by a mid/late 1890s Cruiser force. 

Please, please note that I am a huge fan of this game series and really love most of the new stuff (can't speak to the later jets+missiles content yet tbh), The "Division" system is an excellent addition, the captains and ship history bits really tickle my AAR tastebuds but the new 1890s start has been a massive disappointment so far! (and the changes to the ship ERAs to accomodate it seem to have somewhat spoilt the 1900 start a bit too... far too many heavy secondary batteries perhaps? Such a shame when the improved Treaty system makes the 1920 start so much better!)

[TheOtherPoster]

Thank you for the reply williammiller
Probably is the best solution. Designing ships of moderate displacement with 18, 20in belts in RTW would probably require many internal changes to the program and more things to learn for the player. The way it's now, the 1890 start is smooth to play while it makes sense to design battleships with 10, 14in narrow belts that fit the bill as having armour of inferior quality, as we always wanted.

So ideally in 1890 we should give our battleships at least 10in belts, maybe more, but 9in by 1900 should be enough.
I think I will give my battleships thick narrow belts during most of the 1890s and by the late 90s, assuming Harvey is around, start reducing the thickness till stabilise on 9in or so by 1900 for some years.

 

[gb]

Jun 2, 2023 9:10:05 GMT -6 williammiller said:

These are relevant documents in this discussion:

www.naval-history.net/WW0Book-USN-Armour1937.htm

www.combinedfleet.com/metalprp.htm

IIRC compound (or slightly later nickel-steel) armor in the game is about 70% as effective as Krupp.

Thank you for the interesting links (I did not know the first), but I would like to know what type of armour my RTW3 ship has. For example, if I gain a research progress to Harvey or Krupp armour and I laid down a new ship of the same class of another ship that I am building, I suppose that the two “equal” ships will have different armour, so different protection value (as in the historical case, for example Japanese AC Asama/Tokiwa and near sister Idzumo). I would like to ask that, if feasible, the game system could label these differences. To spoke freely, the labels could be even useful in later decades, when there were a number of progress in krupp armour.